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Comment by sfink | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what you mean exactly, but I think 2nd order force is a fair description. Except you diss solar, so I'm a little confused.

To me, solar is first-order. Solar leads to wind, so it's second-order. (Though really, solar heats water and air, producing wind, so it's kinda third-order.) Oil is... uh... the sun grows the plants which die and get compacted, then we pump up the remnants. I'm not sure what you'd call that.

Uranium is, like, zeroth order then. Fusion in the Sun produces solar.

And yet, none of this really means much. Unless you're constructing Dyson spheres, it really doesn't matter how efficiently you're capturing the max theoretical energies. If you don't believe me, stop eating. Try replacing food with sucking on a power cord.

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I’m referring to energy density. Because civilization requires ever-increasing amounts of energy to grow and prosper.

Solar, even concentrated desert solar, is no good at all. Wind is a distant derivative and much, much worse.

Hydrocarbons and nuclear are the fuels of today and tomorrow because they are orders of magnitude more energy dense. These energy sources are so dense they double as energy storage.

Come back with your concerns when we fully exploit the potential of wind and solar and run out of energy. Right now covering single digit percentages of the world with solar panels would satisfy our energy needs.

I am concerned now because covering the world in solar panels and wind turbines is unsustainable. Each siting location by definition is worse than the one before. The vast land area required will cause tremendous societal and environmental impact. Problems of energy storage, rotating mass, and baseload power remain unsolved by wind and solar.

We need to get on nuclear. Then we can help poorer nations with nuclear power so they can undergo their own Clean Industrial Revolutions. In 80 years we all want the world’s ~11 billion plus people to live far better than we live in the West today.

Energy storage and baseload are in fact solved problems: a good grid (because it's always windy somewhere), and a combination of batteries for overnight storage and power-to-gas for long term storage.

I'm in favor of nuclear power too, but it takes too long to build.

> Energy storage and baseload are in fact solved problems: a good grid (because it's always windy somewhere), and a combination of batteries for overnight storage and power-to-gas for long term storage.

That's far from solved, countries close to each other have very similar weather pattern and wind electricity is especially unreliable. We're also very unlikely to have a massive breakthrough in turbines since we're close to the theoretical maximum already.

The talks I heard by the engineers that actually studied this disagree with you.

Here's what a real wind production looks like: https://twitter.com/TristanKamin/status/1153626109814202368, spot the problem.

Wind turbines obey Betz's law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27s_law and are already close to maximum efficiency, the only thing you can do is drop the production cost.

Is the problem that the chart only covers a specific month and does not combine multiple intermittent energy sources into one?

Depending on the region, seasonal differences caused by low wind are canceled out by higher solar production and low solar production is canceled out by higher wind production. That chart completely fails at showing that.

Now add enough batteries to those charts to store 10h or so of energy and expand the grid to western Europe. Add in some solar as well.

Experts wrote thick reports on how to transition to renewables. You shouldn't dismiss their work with half a dozen graphics on Twitter.

If you say:

> Each siting location by definition is worse than the one before.

How is that not true for nuclear power plants? If we have better tech, we can remove old panels and wind turbines. With nuclear plants the place is lost forever. Let alone that there cannot be a safe place to store the waste.

For comparison calculate the percentage of the earth covered with nuclear power plants to reach the same goal.

Available area is really not the problem.

Before or after meltdown irradiates the countryside?

I'm a LFTR fan. Solar wind has won and civilization should concentrate on enabling it to eliminate gas/coal from our energy production.

Take waste disposal into account and hydrocarbons are not dense at all, they change the composition of the entire atmosphere with their emissions.

Solar and Wind are free and widely availabe primary energy sources. No infrastructure is needed to dig it/pump it up, transport it and process it befor it is usable, as with fossile fuels and nuclear power.

One you take into account energy storage, backup and associated supply chain I think benefits are minor at best

Energy density isn't exactly the most important criteria of an energy source.

Nuclear has a higher energy density than hydrocarbons or batteries but we still don't see nuclear powered cars and aircraft everywhere.

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