Comment by 24gttghh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 24gttghh | Hacker News Reader

That place is absolutely massive! For a simple comparison, add about 6,500 more solar parks of that size, and we would generate enough electricity* for the entire planet. That would cover an area of 242,000 square km (which granted, is about the size of the UK, or a bit smaller than Texas). 2,500 solar parks of that size would replace all coal plants globally. 1,500 would replace all natural gas plants. So that is 4,000 of those to replace all fossil fuel plants that now exist.

Of course things like base load generation and you know...night time need to be taken into consideration, but I think it really puts it all into perspective. A few more years at their current growth, and renewables will be generating more electricity than coal globally. Coal is also decreasing which helps.

I used some data from here to make rough estimates:

https://www.iea.org/statistics/electricity/

I did this to make myself a little less depressed about global warming. Fight for renewables in your towns!

edit: oh yah, that would cost $26 Trillion...but that's for ONLY solar panels which isn't practical.

global energy use is unfortunately growing quickly so the most likely outcome is that we continue the trend where new power sources don't replace dirty older sources, they live on beside them.

Well, not likely in the case of coal, anyway: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/28/global-c...

"China and India have accounted for 85% of new coal power capacity since 2005, according to the Global Energy Monitor report. China permitted construction for the generation of less than 5GW of coal power in 2018, compared with 184GW in 2015. India permitted less than 3GW in 2018, compared with 39GW in 2010. India has added more solar and wind power capacity than coal over the last two years"

Renewable and natural gas generation is approaching or undercutting the marginal cost of operating coal plants in many areas. This isn't accounting for amortized costs of coal plant construction, simply the fuel and operations cost. So coal is well on it's way out. China and India have all but stopped planning new plants.

Natural gas is some ways away from being overtaken by renewables, but trends need only hold for a fairly short period for that crossover to occur.

The future isn't all rainbows yet, but things do seem to be headed in the right direction. Economics strongly disfavor the carbon economy going forward.

Fossil fuels in general are on their way out. If someone doesn't believe it, they should do a google search on stranded assets.

I don't see how that's possible, give the latest bids for solar + battery come in at under $33 / MW hour, ($20 / MW hour after subsidies):

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/06/28/los-angeles-seeks-rec...

$33 is under 1/2 the price of new coal generation. To the engineers who build this stuff it's all over - talking to them they seem to thing the long term price of generation and storage will drop to near 0.

It would cost 26 trillion every 20 years, as the article mentions the lifetime of this park to be 20 years.

1.3T/yr doesn’t seem terrible for energy for the entire world.

Right. Also, at the rate solar installation prices are plummeting, it'll be a fraction of the cost in 20 years.

25 years is the duration of the contract; the plant does not become defunct at the end of that period.

Projects like this are contracted over fairly long initial periods to cover capital costs and so forth, but not so long that governments are locked into bad deals long-term. At the end of a contract period, a new deal is negotiated to continue operations unless it isn't beneficial to do so.

Solar plant operations and maintenance costs are relatively low compared to other kinds of generation, so it's unlikely that the plant will become defunct at the end of the 25 year period.

Solar panel performance at the end of a 25 year period will likely be between 90-80% of initial performance. This is well within what is required for useful economic generation. Most likely, a new deal with be made at lower prices because no capex is needed.

Panel degradation is relatively constant at ~0.6-1% per year. This means that a well-performing panel would be producing 50% of it's rated output after a century, or 36% with poor performance.

These are long-term solutions.

In 20 years the park would have recovered it's investment with a profit. It could keep running after but they will need to calculate if to keep running those or installing newer more efficient panels will be more profitable. BTW the original calculation of $26trillion is an over estimation as even a $100 billion investment brings down costs further as solar is still an improving technology.

stupid question, africa has plenty of sand.. do they make panel locally ?

Not a stupid question! I think it depends on the quality and makeup of the sand, and what the design of the solar panel is. They're not pure silicon.

I'd imagine most are made in China as they are the biggest producer. There doesn't seem much production in Africa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaics_companie...

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