Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We're going to need a lot of solar panels

caseyhandmer.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 842 posts

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#571

Post by labawi »

walrus01 wrote: post #98
jp57 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it seems they need places with ample sunshine and water to electrolyze. That rules out the American west, the Sahara, etc. If they can use seawater, then arid coastal areas could work.

They use vast amounts of seawater, storing the leftover brine, or crystallized salt in huge quantities will become a problem. Existing medium sizee drinking water desalination plants already create a huge amount of brine.

Why would you store it, instead of mixing it back in the sea?

I guess you would need some pipes and pumps to move it away from your inlets, but that seems comparatively cheap.

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#572

Post by ZeroGravitas »

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #549
cinntaile wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sabatier reaction has been known since 1897. The Wiki article also gives some examples of Power-to-gas systems that were built, so I don't know why you claim it's not real. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction

Ah, yes, a reaction. Can you show me this actually in use literally anywhere on earth for this job, 125 years later? Where would I go to buy some atmosphere derived gasoline? You're confusing that something could theoretically be done with that it's a real thing that can be relied on today at scale to save the planet If this was a real, practical thing, it would be in use. We fight wars over this stuff. If the thing…

What are you going to do with the atmosphere derived gasoline that you couldn't do better, cheaper and cleaner with cheap electricity?

That's why no one is making it at scale.

We're rapidly expanding renewable production at an amazing pace, as the article discusses, but we are very much still in the "stop burning fuels and directly electrify processes instead" stage, because that is currently cheaper even without including long term externalities, so even in lawless or suicidal nations self-interest makes it happen.

But the relatively small markets that fossil fuels will retreat to as electrification takes hold will soon be under threat too, for purely economic reasons adding extra impetus for change to happen.

Most of those will just use hydrogen directly, further reducing the market for gasoline, but again even gasoline will be replaced with renewable derived fuels for whatever obscure uses we still have for it, because it will be cheaper.

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#573

Post by pfdietz »

eternityforest wrote: post #167
ben_w wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A global grid was my favourite solution until recently. The problem is that it needs the combined cables to have cross section in the order of a few (3?) square meters (at 640 kV), and that in turn is in the order of 52 years of global copper production (we make more aluminium than copper but Al is a worse conductor). Using even higher voltages makes everything much easier, and the cables’ combined cross sections may…

I doubt copper would be used in that kind of thing. It's worse, but not that much worse. Energy storage might not be an issue in a decade or so. There's no law of physics saying they can't make batteries without conflict metals. Eventually someone's going to invent a battery made of some cheap hydrocarbon you make by the tanker car, or that compressed Co2 turbine system will turn out to be the real deal, or they'll f…

Copper is used in applications where the conductor is volume constrained. Transmission lines are not volume constrained, they are mass constrained. Aluminum is superior there: its electrical conductivity divided by density is higher than copper.

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#574

Post by sgerenser »

badpun wrote: post #465
Roritharr wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The house I live in, like everyone's in my street, is from the late 1800s. Insulating those houses from the outside is very expensive, to the tune of 200k, where the house is worth around 500k in the inflated environment we're in. At the very same time, I haven't found a single insurance company willing to insure the house after insulation for insulation related moisture damage. This makes insulating this house an ab…

Interesting, why isn't the moisture on walls behind insulation ever an issue on new construction?

In addition to what was already said, there definitely is and has been many moisture issues on walls and exteriors in new construction. A condo building near me had to have its exterior completely torn off, and lots of sheathing, insulation, cladding, etc replaced due to a botched install of EIFS. Google for “EIFS failures.” This was a big problem in the 80s/90s or so but apparently it’s still happening, at least with subpar builders.

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#575

Post by pfdietz »

jvanderbot wrote: post #240
walrus01 wrote: post #4

We're going to need a lot of solar panels and an efficient way to transport power from a very sunny place to another location where the loads are. For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie The pacific DC intertie right now often ends up being used to transport power from hydroelectric dams in WA/OR to California. But there's nothing to say that something couldn't function the other way if there…

Not really. The author proposes that hydrocarbons are in fact a reasonable transport / storage mechanism. That's the bulk of the meat here. > "Terraform Industries’ synthetic natural gas process is not particularly complicated or difficult to achieve. We intended to make it easy to scale and deploy. If Europe had enough solar power deployed, even at current European solar prices, we could synthesize desperately neede…

I've seen people saying "Alaska shows that nuclear is needed, as wind/solar don't work well there." They don't mention that the average power level on the largest grid in Alaska is just 600 MW. And Alaska is densely populated compared to, say, the northern half of Canada.

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#576

Post by valenterry »

yayachiken wrote: post #533
illiac786 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The expected economic lifetime of a building in Germany is approximately 100 years Source? Counter examples: my house is built 1908. Lots of other houses built around the same time in the area I live in. My parents live in a house from 1749. The entire village where they live is made of houses built 200+ years ago, it's written on the house in general, hence easy to check. Hence I very much stand by my prediction it…

> Source? Assuming an economic lifetime of 70 to 100 years for new buildings is industry practice based on standards like DIN 276. You can find those numbers (with some variation) on pretty much every web page dealing with economics of building, for example here: https://www.bauprofessor.de/wirtschaftliche-nutzungsdauer-ge... You can also approximately extrapolate that number from the source I have given you. (Which…

I think you misunderstand what "economic lifetime" means here. It is mostly relevant for tax purposes.

In other words: if you build a house for $X and live in it then for tax purposes it is assumed that (on average) after a 100 years you must have been spending $X for maintenance so that you can sell the building for $X. If you have spent more money, then you can't deduct that from tax (exceptions exist).

Or in yet other words: if you don't spend anything for maintenance then after 100 years (on average) the building will be worth nothing, meaning that it will cost the same to rebuild it compared to fix it.

But since most people maintan their buildings, i.e. fix the roof when it starts leaking, fix the doors and windows when they break or are not airtight anymore etc., buildings are much older than 100 years. 100 years is the _minimum_ time before it's even worth to rebuild on average.

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#577

Post by pfdietz »

ghostpepper wrote: post #114
rektide wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'a really weird but there's a surprisingly growing base of farming amid a solar farm, where apparently many plants just cant stand the pure sun & benefit from some periodic shade during the day. I dont know how much I believe it but combined agriculture/solar use seems perhaps legit to be a thing. Also, solar panels dont seem that difficult to recycle. There's already a decent & growing reclaimation market. Giant s…

> Also, solar panels dont seem that difficult to recycle. There's already a decent & growing reclaimation market. Curious if you're basing this on firsthand knowledge? I know nothing about solar panels but I've read some stories[0][1] lately about difficulties recycling them, particularly older ones that were deployed 10-20 years ago and are now reaching EOL. [0] https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/solar-pan…

Since the vast majority of PV modules that have ever been installed are still working there isn't much recycling yet. Most of the mass of a PV panel is mundane things like glass and aluminum (and perhaps steel for ground mountings) that are either eminently recyclable or easily disposable in mass.

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#578

Post by tsimionescu »

pydry wrote: post #510
tsimionescu wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think that Microsoft stock price wouldn't go down significantly if Bill Gates put 45% of the company up for sale?

IIRC put 44% of the company up for sale over a period of many years and the price of microsoft stock did indeed go up during that time. So yes, I think what would happen is what did happen.

The hypothetical was about selling them all at once, or a very short period of time.

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#579

Post by dangerlibrary »

_mhr_ wrote: post #74
dangerlibrary wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I've never made a comment on HN commenting on someone else's tone, but I've seen this exact response, word for word, a lot recently on many posts. I don't like this trend. I find it to be adversarial and in bad faith. Suppose they did read the article. Are they likely to reply to you defending themselves? Next time, please address the actual content of their comment instead.

I'm not sure what to make of your hypothetical question about the GP commenter's likelihood of responding, since the first (and only) response to this when I went to bed was from walrus01, whom I was responding to and had a brief conversation with.

I commented in this way because the article directly addressed the problems with the GP comment, and the GP comment made no mention of it. There's also a pattern on HN and elsewhere of comments popping up in top-level threads made in bad faith to derail and redirect conversation, especially on anything related to power generation or renewables. Telling someone to "address the actual content" is precisely what I was doing.

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#580

Post by cinntaile »

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #549
cinntaile wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sabatier reaction has been known since 1897. The Wiki article also gives some examples of Power-to-gas systems that were built, so I don't know why you claim it's not real. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction

Ah, yes, a reaction. Can you show me this actually in use literally anywhere on earth for this job, 125 years later? Where would I go to buy some atmosphere derived gasoline? You're confusing that something could theoretically be done with that it's a real thing that can be relied on today at scale to save the planet If this was a real, practical thing, it would be in use. We fight wars over this stuff. If the thing…

Your claim was it wasn't real. Which is factually incorrect. If you mean something else you should properly articulate what you mean instead.
Post reply on HN