Can solar costs keep shrinking?

Post by pulvinar » Mon, Sep 09, 2024, 9:06 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #613

pulvinar wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The middle of a large desert is effectively free land, and perfect for solar. I don't see how space could ever be more economical in any respect. If beaming energy gets cheaper than transmission lines, we can beam it point-to-point on the earth too.

Read more. Atmosphere and night tank ground-based solar by maybe 80% of what's possible. And, sand is a terrible thing to operate any efficient optics around. No, the desert is a fairly bad choice. Sure, it's kinda bright there, part of the day. That's about the only thing on the plus side.

The vast majority of telescopes are ground-based even though space is optimal for seeing, because the economics favor the ground by a wide margin. Same with solar: if you get 3 times the light in space per cell but it costs 100+ times as much to install and use, it's pointless.

And there's more than enough desert that isn't sand dunes. Even the Sahara is only 25% dunes.

Post by toss1 » Mon, Sep 09, 2024, 9:27 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #299

toss1 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> That embeds so many assumptions about the economy and where GDP comes from YUP. Of course there is a strong correlation between energy use and GDP growth; it takes more energy to produce more stuff. But ultimately, what produces more stuff is harder to measure. To light the factories, more energy used to correlate with more light, until we swap out the incandescent/halogen lighting sources for LEDs. Then, we get m…

> To light the factories, more energy used to correlate with more light, until we swap out the incandescent/halogen lighting sources for LEDs this is nonsense. lighting hasn't been a significant fraction of the energy usage of factories since they switched from being lighted by fireplaces to gaslighting. not in 02024, not in 01974, not in 01924, not in 01874 > Seems that measuring [gdp] growth by energy consumption i…

>> lighting hasn't been a significant fraction of the energy usage of factories

Right, but it is an easy example to explain at the outset and why in the literal next sentence I mentioned: "Same for more efficient motors, swapping ovens for inductive heating, more efficient processes, etc."

>> embeds the false assumption that higher energy efficiency reduces energy use

NO. I am describing a COMPLETELY different effect. I am not talking about marketing anything, but the results of improved process efficiencies.

If Company X, or an entire industry, switch from large inefficient ovens to spot-heating, and still produce the same number of widgets for 10% of the energy, the energy used has entirely decoupled from economic output. Same GDP, lower energy consumption. Or, if the new widgets are cheaper and more get sold, then greater GDP and smaller energy consumption number.

The point is, regardless of all the knock-on and sometimes paradoxical effects, the previously strong 1:1 correlation of energy use to GDP starts to break when efficiency-enabling technologies gain widespread adoption.

There are also paradoxical questions such as what happens when Company X switches entirely from oil heat and electricity to on-site solar & batteries, producing the same number of widgets using the same total energy? The GDP seems to go down because oil is no longer being pumped, transported, refined, and transported again to Company X's factories, but the output is the same, so the same net goods flow into the economy. The entire enterprise of getting refined oil to Company X is now shown to be redundant to production. But also, the energy usage as measured at the grid went to zero.

Again, the point is, the not only is the relationship of energy-GDP unstable, the entire measurement of GDP is problematic.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?