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Solar is winning the energy race

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Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#91

Post by defrost »

spwa4 wrote: post #86

The problem solar will create is that solar doesn't work for highrises. It works for suburbs. Electricity companies will be forced (more and more) to tax suburbs for nothing (for the sun, Louis XVI-style) to keep reasonable energy prices in cities. Unless of course, cities think ahead for once and city hall gets large solar collectors (at least the physical area) along power lines NOW .

Coal fired power stations work for high rises and for the suburbs.

Battery backed wind and solar farms work for high rises and for the suburbs (see, for example: South Australia).

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#92

Post by insane_dreamer »

torginus wrote: post #51
foragerdev wrote: post #10

Solar is not less than revolution in Pakistan. Almost every home and factory has solar installed on their roofs. More affluent houses have almost gone off grid; others are selling back to grid and others who can't afford has their own small scale 12V solar panels to run fans in the scorching summer of Pakistan to save electricity bills. It is all done by people independently without much support from the government a…

It is genuninely insane (in a good way!) I've encountered some degree of apprehension and disbelief from people in Western countries when I told them, that countries considered poor and backwards often are further along in the transition to renewables, and even for the everyman, installing solar and having (a usually Chinese) EV just makes sense - economically, and not only in terms of saving the planet. The markup o…

> countries considered poor and backwards often are further along in the transition to renewables

This isn’t surprising; cell phones and mobile payments also took over much faster in Africa than Europe/US because the existing infrastructure (landlines, banks) was highly underdeveloped or unreliable.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#93

Post by mytailorisrich »

awongh wrote: post #55
mytailorisrich wrote: post #2

Thank you, China. One question I have with solar is: what is the reasonable maximum it can produce as a proportion of each country's needs? Solar is the most guaranteed to be intermittent electricity source around, and can have high seasonality, too.

There must be some kind of calculation generally based on latitude? A sub-question that I would be curious about is how much climate in that region then affects the total possible solar energy. How much is the variance from a naive calculation just based on latitude? One other second-order effect is: developed economies are heavily weighted towards places that are cold / farther north than less developed places (as a…

> There must be some kind of calculation generally based on latitude?

I am suspecting the same. Thanks for the reply, not sure why my comment seems to have ruffled some feathers...

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#94

Post by ZeroGravitas »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #42
tiku wrote: post #8

[flagged]

We've already got pumped-hydro storage infrastructure and battery tech, while certainly not as far along as the boosters circa the middle of the last decade promised us, is at a point where it's viable as one part of the puzzle. Speaking of the larger picture, this is to say nothing of all the other renewable options out there that continue to work when the sun goes down. EDIT: And it doesn't speak at all to the othe…

Solar has progressed so fast that only the most insanely optimistic predictions were accurate in the end.

I'd guess batteries are also at that stage.

Googling it seems that is correct eg:

> In 2017, U.S. grid storage developers promised they could deliver 35 gigawatts by 2025. They beat their target and made batteries a key power-sector player.

> That goal sounded improbable even to some who believed that storage was on a growth trajectory. A smattering of independent developers and utilities had managed to install just 500 megawatts of batteries nationwide, equivalent to one good-size gas-fired power plant. Building 35 gigawatts would entail 70-fold growth in just eight years.

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/grid-sto...

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#95

Post by kalleboo »

jstummbillig wrote: post #38
isodev wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what batteries and wind and hydro are for.

And battery prices and buildout are looking really promising. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2025/electric-...

And that's even coming from the IEA who have a pessimistic track record around predictions for renewable technology https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/D4E12AQE79Zr-GUVJcQ/art...

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#96

Post by Gud »

patall wrote: post #74
healthy_throw wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heat reduces solar production, ideally you have very sunny environment with about 25C / 77F.

Why is that always posted without stating the magnitude of the effect? The numbers that you find online are around 15% relative loss at 60°C vs. 25°C panel temperatur (I remember a HN comment reporting 12% comparing peak April to peak July). That is significant, but not world changing, especially for AC.

What about panel degradation?

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#97

Post by ZeroGravitas »

foragerdev wrote: post #70
torginus wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is genuninely insane (in a good way!) I've encountered some degree of apprehension and disbelief from people in Western countries when I told them, that countries considered poor and backwards often are further along in the transition to renewables, and even for the everyman, installing solar and having (a usually Chinese) EV just makes sense - economically, and not only in terms of saving the planet. The markup o…

Yes, that's drive me insane, west which is biggest advocator of climate change and preaches renewable energy has not done as much as a poor country like Pakistan has done. And Pakistan is the one who is affected the most by the climate change. From September to February Pakistan AQI is basically unbreathable. Rain pattern is disturbed, winter has become shorter and summer has become longer, basically there is no spri…

Europe can and should do more but it also leads per capita solar installs.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#98

Post by defrost »

Gud wrote: post #96
patall wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that always posted without stating the magnitude of the effect? The numbers that you find online are around 15% relative loss at 60°C vs. 25°C panel temperatur (I remember a HN comment reporting 12% comparing peak April to peak July). That is significant, but not world changing, especially for AC.

What about panel degradation?

There are 30 year old still functioning panels in Australia.

Buried in that longevity, is an observation that a fifth of panels degrade faster than expected

  The long tail appears on graphs showing the degradation rate per year of the panels, indicating that up to 20% of all samples perform 1.5 times worse than the average.
See (Uni NSW study) Cracking the ‘long tail’ problem: new research targets hidden solar panel issue (2026) - https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2026/01/research-targe...

and discussion: Maximising time in the sun: how to maintain and repair solar panels to make them last (2026) - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/feb/13/maxim...

This is more about the lifetime of many PV panels in Australia (temps to 45 C so far) not specifically about PV panels with many hours at > 50 C.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#99

Post by functional_dev »

defrost wrote: post #36
kwakubiney wrote: post #31

Might be a noob question, but why can't EVs have solar panels on them directly so they can get charged just by moving around? Or why can't we have SVs(Solar Vehicles)? Why do we have to use solar panels on EV stations rather than just having them on the vehicles themselves?

You absolutely can .. but in order to be self sustaining vehicles need to look somewhat like the builds that appear in Australian multi day solar races - ultra lightweight, extreme streamlining, zero driver comfort, no extras like cargo space and automatic rear doors, etc. Maybe in time efficiencies will get there. * https://worldsolarchallenge.org/ * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K0FD9Hh6XY * https://www.youtube.…

consumer car needs hundreds of pounds of reinforcement... just to pass side impact test

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#100

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

nirolo wrote: post #79
kwakubiney wrote: post #31

Might be a noob question, but why can't EVs have solar panels on them directly so they can get charged just by moving around? Or why can't we have SVs(Solar Vehicles)? Why do we have to use solar panels on EV stations rather than just having them on the vehicles themselves?

Aptera has this planned but not sure if they ever reach market maturity. There also was a project car from the Nordics I think. Can't recall the name though. Main problem is the large amount of energy a car needs vs what kind of surface area you have and efficiency we get. An ideal (100% effiwncy) solar cell of 5m² would still need 20 hours to charge a 100kWh battery. And we are way off on area an efficiency in reali…

> Aptera has this planned but not sure if they ever reach market maturity.

Yes, Aptera does not have a shipping product, and if they ship the current design it might not have a large market for it. The have been promising delivery for a long time now, so it certainly looks a lot like vapourware.

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