Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries • Hacker News Board

Re: Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

#71

Post by greglindahl » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 10:53 PM UTC

_red wrote: post #30

jaclaz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and without taking into account that after 15 or 20 - maybe 25 - years the panels will need to be replaced. How "clean" is disposing of these depleted slabs of glass and silicon (or whatever other elements)? How much will it cost?

A bigger environmental problem is that many solar use mandates having batteries. The average armchair environmentalist loves to ignore the thousands of tons of earth that must be mined to get enough rare earth minerals for a single battery to be constructed.

Lithium isn't a rare earth element. Batteries don't use rare earth elements. Some electric motors do, but that's a choice; Tesla's doesn't.

If you mean to say that lithium mining is a bad thing, then you might want to try to come up with a better measure of environmental impact than the number of tons of earth moved.

Re: Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

#72

Post by protomyth » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 11:02 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #57

protomyth wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem is that we really don't have any local experienced outfits. Chicken and egg problem I'd imagine.

Where in North Dakota? If you provide a rough location, I will come back with options for you.

58335 - North East

Re: Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

#73

Post by DenisM » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 11:04 PM UTC

_red wrote: post #30

jaclaz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and without taking into account that after 15 or 20 - maybe 25 - years the panels will need to be replaced. How "clean" is disposing of these depleted slabs of glass and silicon (or whatever other elements)? How much will it cost?

A bigger environmental problem is that many solar use mandates having batteries. The average armchair environmentalist loves to ignore the thousands of tons of earth that must be mined to get enough rare earth minerals for a single battery to be constructed.

I can't find any evidence that Powerwall, for example, has any rare earths in it.

Can you?

Re: Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

#74

Post by planteen » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 11:31 PM UTC

diafygi wrote: post #17

planteen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem like there is a ton of need for software in solar, but I could be wrong. It seems to me that solar technology is mostly in line of something like a power semiconductor. You need lots of people who understand semiconductor physics and process to manufacture the panels. Then an EE puts is all together. There is software at all of those steps, but it seems to be more of a cost than the primary product.

You're right, there isn't a lot of software in the solar panels themselves (they are indeed just a semiconductor). However, that's not where the costs are. Only about 34% of the cost of a solar installation is actual hardware. 64% of the installed cost is customer acquisition, overhead, engineering, labor, etc[1]. These are all costs that can be optimized with software. For example, my startup focuses on automating t…

> Think of it as a scaling problem. Scaling is all about software.

Interesting. But to me, solar feels like a utility (water, sewer, power, gas), which scaled before digital computers or software.

Re: Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

#75

Post by floatrock » Sun, Dec 25, 2016, 4:55 AM UTC

amelius wrote: post #62

floatrock wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a distracting red herring argument and you know it. Solar makes up less than 1% of the US energy supply. No one is saying we power our high-energy industrial consumers until we get up to say 50% renewable with all existing the low-hanging fruit out there. Energy is not an all-or-nothing proposition. You can still use the energy-dense sources where they're the best tool for the job while still decreasing our e…

You are looking for an argument that isn't there. I was asking because someone else brought up the question, and I still think it is interesting to know the answer.

Apologies if it was genuine curiosity, tone doesn't get across on the internet. Interpreted it as another leading question. Point is, the shift to renewables is an incremental process where industries with high/dense energy requirements will likely not be the first applications.