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We're going to need a lot of solar panels

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

#771

Post by z9znz »

danielscrubs wrote: post #752
z9znz wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a house in a village in the Netherlands. The house is from 20-150 years old, depending on which section you're in. It is cold as f in this place all winter. It's also hot as f in these new 37 degree summers. So the question is, is the problem the old homes, or our insistence to live in inefficient buildings in places with poor climates? Of course in this country, there's more demand for housing than can be…

Currently living in a rich area, 20 stories very modern high apartment complex. The first thing I thought when stepping into the apartment for the first time with its massive windows was “jikes the windows are leaking heat like crazy”. In my old home that was 60 years old it had way better insulation (with triple layered windows). What I’m trying to say is that this is about incentives, not about how old things are.…

Not sure what part of the world you're in, but OP was describing Germany, and I'm in Netherlands. Both of these countries have pretty strict requirements for energy efficiency of new buildings. So at least here, it would be safe to assume that a Also, there's a new government initiative to provide incentives and special financing for property owners (who rent their property) to bring the efficiency of all properties up to a decent minimum level by 2030 if they wish to be allowed to continue renting them out. I imagine there may be some exclusions for certain very old properties, especially historical/monumental ones. But regardless, it should have a big positive impact.

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

#772

Post by Kosirich »

My dad just installed 200kW on the roof of his factory. The biggest issue is getting the blip* contract with the grid so you could sell the electricity back, and I mean that at any rate. This is by far the biggest hurdle so having an alternative to store energy that makes economic sense will be the biggest wind in the back for a lot of people wanting to do the same.

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

#773

Post by eternityforest »

ncmncm wrote: post #402
eternityforest wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A clear majority of utility storage will not be batteries, just because cheaper methods will be favored. The cheapest will rely on E = Fx, where F is air pressure, or gravity, or buoyancy. But liquified anhydrous ammonia, despite being more costly to make, will be extremely popular because it is easy to transport and store, and is fantastically useful for many purposes.

I think that depends on battery tech. If they get magnesium air or metal free organic flow working I would imagine it would probably be chosen over mechanical methods.

Ideally I suspect you don't really want utility storage anyway, you want something so cheap, small, and renewable you can do point of load storage and have a bit of grid independence, and not need as much transmission infrastructure.

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

#774

Post by icelancer »

walrus01 wrote: post #278
incompatible wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remarkably, this was being planned even while Australia had an anti renewable energy government, which was more interested in promoting the coal industry. Yet as the maps make clear, Australia with its climate, location, and low population density, is potentially a solar energy superpower.

Australia and its policy on coal mines and such seems like a bizarre version of USA Republicans. It's like English-colonialism Texas.

You should visit, it's weirdly close to that, with pretty brutal anti-drug laws and horrible Internet to boot... but super high minimum wages? Not to mention how they treated their people native to the land... somehow rivals what the English/Americans did to the Native Americans, if you can believe it.

It's bizarro land. It's pleasant enough, but it's not hard to see how Americans and Australians are related.

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

#775

Post by ncmncm »

pcdoodle wrote: post #536
ncmncm wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Places without enough sun in the winter, and without enough wind, too, sometimes, will just import power. You might be able to draw down on HVDC transmission lines. But there will also be abundant solar farms in the tropics synthesizing ammonia for export. If the weather prediction says not enough wind, and your tanked ammonia would run low, and you can't book enough transmission line power, you just order a shipment…

I had no idea ammonia had such properties, any recommended readings/video?

Ammonia is liquid at room temperature under moderate pressure (~10 atm), so that is its usual form for storage and transport.

Ammonia is favored as the refrigerant in industrial cooling systems, but not domestic or automotive for safety reasons.

Ammonia may be burned in ordinary combined-cycle gas turbines and ship engines, requiring only new plumbing, because it corrodes some metals. The ship-building industry is already gearing up for the transition to ammonia fuel. Purely electrical synthesis production capacity will be low through 2026, because factories for synthesizers are still under construction.

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

#776

Post by whoooooo123 »

lstodd wrote: post #749
whazor wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are natural gas leaks on a regular basis here in Europe. It only explodes with a fire source. People smell the gas leak and inform the fire station.

Only if it's doped. Pure methane is odorless.

Is it ever not doped though? At what point in the process do they put the smell in?

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

#777

Post by threatripper »

rocqua wrote: post #564
Helmut10001 wrote: post #320

People both underestimate and overestimate what PV can do. In summer and around noon, here in western Europe, there is so much PV-electricity produced that it is _almost_ enough to fulfill all demands. In winter, the amount is like a drop in the desert. I have built a 30 kWp PV at home 2 years ago - you would think this is quite big, for a private plant. It is not enough. If I want to power a heat pump (with drilled…

What I found cool about the synthetic natural gas, is that Europe already has really good seasonal storage of natural gas. Hence the infrastructure is available for summer-time generation of gas using solar abundance that we use in winter for heating. To my mind, it is seasonal load shifting that is Europe's long term energy problem. Winter energy demand has a bottom that needs to be met. We used to ensure this by st…

If we produce considerably more electricity than we can use it becomes essentially free energy at those times. Then it could make sense to convert it into gas instead of extracting gas from the earth. Until then the extracted gas will be cheaper and overall more efficient. Local availability of natural gas can be a problem at times, tough.

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

#778

Post by tblt »

whoooooo123 wrote: post #776
lstodd wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if it's doped. Pure methane is odorless.

Is it ever not doped though? At what point in the process do they put the smell in?

At the distribution point, usually. Some gas networks intended for industrial use don't contain the chemical that makes gas smell as that gas is an input in a chemical process, not burnt for heat.

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

#779

Post by ZeroGravitas »

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #636
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inc…

I just want to make sure that I'm understanding correctly. You're saying that yes, we can economically make gasoline from the air today, and that the reason we don't is all the renewable production we're ramping up? That everyone just decided not to sell carbon negative cheap gasoline? I guess it's silly to ask why you believe that we can do this, based on no plant ever having been built with tens of billions of ince…

I thought I was clear.

We can do anything that atmospheric gasoline or normal gasoline could do cheaper without any gasoline at all.

Therefore there is no market for atmospheric gasoline, and the only reason there is a market for normal gasoline, is because the costs are hidden for now.

It is not "economic" to live off credit cards just because you don't bother to open the letters telling you how much you owe and you plan to be dead before they come to collect.

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

#780

Post by valenterry »

yayachiken wrote: post #678
valenterry wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me quote you: > The expected economic lifetime of a building in Germany is approximately 100 years. Which means that on average, the house will be torn down and rebuilt after at most 100 years, because additional upkeep would not make economic sense. This is just wrong. An economic lifetime of 100 years does not mean that the (on average) buildings will be torn down and rebuilt after at most 100 years. And I have…

Please don't forget that my claim is in the context of somebody else claiming that insulating all housing in Europe would at least take 100 years. Now you are literally redefining the terms I use and then quoting them back to me to argue your new semantics, are you serious? On average, a house is considered to last 100 years in Germany. Call it economic lifetime or whatever else you want. I still stand by that claim,…

> But you won't convince me of that if you try to prove me wrong on semantics > (...) > On average, a house is considered to last 100 years in Germany.

First please define what you mean by "last" so that we share the same semantics and then provide a source on this. And if you mean that a building will have been destroyed and rebuild after 100 years on average then I doubt this claim - after making such a strong claim I think it's up to you to provide evidence.

> I quoted specific numbers on the housing stock which are consistent with that claim

Are you referring to https://www.bauprofessor.de/wirtschaftliche-nutzungsdauer-ge... ? Because if you do, then again, you misunderstand what they are talking about. Also, don't forget that average house-ages are misleading due to WW2 where a lot of old houses got destroyed. So you can't e.g. just take the average age of existing houses, that doesn't work.

> And of course the insulation is not "for free", but the additional costs are usually worth it.

Look, I agree with you - but the way you said it before is so exaggerated and easy to misunderstand that it's no wonder that you are getting these kind of responses. This is a very emotional topic and it's good to try to adjust the language accordingly.

> I also mentioned that many people decide irrationally because they do not want the work associated with planning and ordering the maintenance to be performed.

It's easy to call someone irrational - but why do you think they don't want this work to be performed. How comes? I doubt that you assume they want the planet to die, so what do you think are their reasons?

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