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Comment by jeffreyrogers | Hacker News Reader

I don't really see that happening. Most of the things you've suggested would require large amounts on energy to produce. I don't see energy getting cheaper over the next 50-100 years. It seems to me that climate change and reduced dependency on fossil fuels we lead to reduced globalization and population reduction.

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The cost of energy will go near zero. The marginal cost of an electron captured with solar is free.

Solar is starting to beat fossil fuel installations already, below $0.05 USD per kWh.

This was not predicted even by the biggest cheerleaders even 10 years ago: "In 2017, the solar industry achieved SunShot’s original 2020 cost target of $0.06 per kilowatt-hour for utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) solar power three years ahead of schedule, dropping from about $0.28 to $0.06 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)." [1]

Sunshot goal for 2030 is $0.03 per kWh.

[1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/sunshot-2030

> Solar is starting to beat fossil fuel installations already, below $0.05 USD per kWh.

I read that over and over, but it's like comparing apples and oranges.

Depends upon your country.

Countries with significant lake hydroelectricity (not run-of-river) can "store" the solar power (no batteries needed) by reducing flow during the daytime (and increasing flow at nighttime if required).

This is because hydroelectric dams are essentially stores of electricity. No need for pumping or other expensive storage schemes, is your already have one!

Does your current price of PV include storage?

Also the PV cells made mainly from China are currently manufactured using coal power plant. But what would be the price of photovoltaics if only renewable energies were used? My guess is it will be much higher.

I have never understood what people are trying to argue when they make this point. It would be like an oncologist arguing against surgery that would inhibit a tumour on the basis that it wouldn't eradicate it.

Okay, how about the copper that transports that electron to somewhere it can do useful work? How about the 1800C furnace that melts sand into the silicon for the solar panel? How about the diesel fuel that the massive mining trucks used to haul the copper ore out of the mine are fueled with (these things are heavy and get something like 8 gallons to the mile (not a typo) good luck running them on batteries)?

Those things aren't going to zero anytime soon.

Mining trucks are going electric. They actually make energy when loaded and going down a hill.

https://hackaday.com/2019/08/22/electric-dump-truck-produces...

Furnaces have been run off of solar (parabolic mirrors) for quite some time.

While it sounds like an excellent candidate in all mines, one must keep in mind that the majority of mines tend to move ore/waste rock upwards. In those other, rarer cases (for instance: mountain top mining), electrification of the haulage fleet makes good sense.

Good to know, thanks! Seems obvious this is the way to go. Excited to see growth in this space in the future.

> How about the 1800C furnace that melts sand into the silicon for the solar panel

I wonder if a process similar to that used for molten salt batteries, using reflected, concentrated sunlight, could be used to melt sand into what is needed for more solar panels, electronics etc, and use the stored energy while it cools off, essentially combining the processes? And of course for other [s]melting processes powered by fossil fuels today?

Hmm, after doing a bit of research: the melting point for saltpeter (used in molten salt storage [0]) is only 550°F, while silicon's is 2,577°F... would a reflecting solar array be able to reach those temperatures? If I'm reading this [1] correctly, you could only practically get to 3,698.33°F (really close to your example of a 1,800°C furnace) if you collected all the sunlight falling onto earth. It's got to be much worse than that though in practice, because to focus all of it onto a single point would require beaming reflections from the perimeter a long distance through air, and also around the curvature of the earth...

So, we need to build this on the moon or in orbit? Oooh, Futurama actually showed us what could go wrong here [2].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy#Molten_sa...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Ideal...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qksm5cRtcU

Why not just use an electrical furnace and power that with solar power?

The furnaces for making crude silicon are already powered by electricity. So are the Siemens process reactors for refining silicon into solar and electronic grades. So are the Czochralski crystal pullers used to turn refined silicon into mono-crystalline boules for manufacturing wafers.

"Silicon processing: from quartz to crystalline silicon solar cells"

https://www.pyrometallurgy.co.za/Pyro2011/Papers/083-Xakalas...

even if there were tens or even hundreds of UNIVAC installations, who’s going to run the telegraph lines for all the teletype terminals this would require??

This is just pointless smug contrarianism, I hope you're just in a bad mood and don't really believe or think this way regularly. Mining trucks are excellent candidates for battery electrification, Volvo is already building and selling them.

What other things do you think are never happening that are infact already happening?

I really doubt it makes sense to use electric vehicles for mining, but I could be wrong. I guess we'll be able to see in the coming years what fraction of mining vehicles are electric.

But what is wrong about what I stated? It's obviously impossible for solar to approach $0 because of the large material costs inherent in manufacturing solar panels and transporting electricity. This is not contrarianism, it's realism. We probably use more energy per capita than is sustainable, and eventually we will have to change that.

Also solar panels wear out. I could see a case being made for the cost going to zero if you amortize it, but you can only amortize it over about 25 years, after which you have to replace the panels. This sets a floor on the price.

> I really doubt it makes sense to use electric vehicles for mining, but I could be wrong. I guess we'll be able to see in the coming years what fraction of mining vehicles are electric.

They're slow-moving, inherently massive and heavy, and travel relatively short distances per round-trip. So they don't care much about battery weight, size or limited range, and appreciate the massive torque from low RPMs.

It's kind of an ideal case for a battery-swapping BEV system. Just wait for the battery costs and energy densities to both improve and this will be a no-brainer. They can charge the drained battery on the grid from cheaper/cleaner sources while the other is busy hauling a load.

Of course if the terrain is such that the mine is on the top of a mountain ascended empty but descended full, you don't even need battery swapping, it'll recharge on the descent.

Nobody wants to spend money owning and operating those diesel engines if they don't have to. When the BEV option is available and makes business sense they'll switch immediately. They'll require little maintenance, and you don't need specially trained technicians to swap batteries and order new ones when they need replacing.

While I wanted to agreee it's just contrarianism, he has a point. Mine electrification is going to come very, very slowly. There are 2 principal reasons,

1) mines run on a 24/7 schedule. There is not enough down time to charge batteries in a shift and with how completely filthy machines get we need better solutions for battery swapping in mining before that becomes an option, and

2) because (like the mine I am at right now) a non-negligible number of mines are far from grids or clean power sources, a lot of battery power would come from fossil fuels burned near the mine.

There is interest, but most of the actual use seems fairly superficial (public image boosts).

Transporting energy long distances seems like such a waste. There's the cost of transporting fossil fuels or power lines for electricity.

What economics would it take for your mine to have its own solar or nuclear powered microgrid. What about when fossil fuel supplies are unreliable or interrupted.

Appreciate the thoughtful questions, and inquisitive responses! Great to see people figure out how we might push these closer to zero. We'll need to lower the costs of manufacturing solar panels and transporting electricity + raise the lifetime of panels.

> Mining trucks are excellent candidates for battery electrification, Volvo is already building and selling them.

For near zero? Where?

> Those things aren't going to zero anytime soon.

Not with that attitude

Someone is going to cover the Sahara with solar panels and make some serious cash. Bonus points for automating the production of solar panels out of sand.

Call it "Sand to Solar". Some of the best ideas start out as jokes, I googled for this because I was curious:

"New technology allows heated sand to generate electricity, presenting a viable new option for investors to focus on."

https://oilandenergyinvestor.com/acq/new-energy-from-sand-wh...

I wasted more time than I care to think reading that article. There is no mention of how the technology works. A vague reference to an academic project in the UAE. Most of the article is just filler fluff. This is a marketing article to investors for this authors "wealth building energy advantage".

If you're curious, try googling for "SandShifter", here's an energy.gov profile:

https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/project-profile-csp-energy...

https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1183706-solar-holdings-final-tec...

Hey, I work at a nuclear fission company. We think we can get our electricity prices to around $0.0025 / kWh by around 2045. This represents a ~20x reduction from off-peak cost in Ontario where I live, and ~150x reduction from average electricity prices in Germany.

Also, w.r.t. population, the way I see it our population is growing very quickly whether we like it or not (look at Africa). I think there's a good opportunity for us to support a population much larger than we have right now with improved sustainable energy tech.

(Solar panels are also getting cheaper, and will probably run around $0.02/kWh in the near future if iteration continues, and are probably capable of supporting us up to 20 billion people as well)

I'm excited about nuclear, but it seems like we will eventually run out of uranium fuel unless we switch to breeder reactors. Am I off on this? This is assuming that nuclear usage grows to become a larger portion of our total energy use. I see nuclear as potentially solving a lot of our problems, but it seems to have some difficulties as well.

I'm more skeptical that we can support such a large population. Right now we make heavy use of fertilizer, which is produced from natural gas and by mining phosphates. Probably we could avoid using natural gas, but this would require using more energy, so I'm not sure how sustainable this is long-term.

You're absolutely right, U235 reserves are only enough to last a couple hundred years at current consumption and exploration. We could probably sustain a long time with burner LWRs but it will require massive investment.

Breeders however (whether you go with Th-U or U-Pu fuel) both should be able to take us to at least another 10,000 present-equivalent years on a wholly nuclear powered economy.

You're also right to suspect fertilizer, I feel the same way. I've seen some of the phosphate mines around the world and it's kind of horrifying, so I'm hoping asteroid mining can fix our metal extraction problem.

I heard C-Type asteroids have plenty of phosphorus, but I'm definitely not an expert on asteroid mining. If they do, though, it will likely be enough to sustain us for quadrillions of human-years (humans * years) because the asteroid belt is just so damn massive compared to the Earth's crust.

Hmm, Hinkley C is signed up at a strike price of £92.50/MWh, in 2012 Pounds. A 400x reduction when so much of the cost of nuclear is safety, waste management and decommissioning? That's surprising to say the least.

Can you give any clue on how?

The trend of solar and wind continuing the inexorable march downward seems much more certain.

· Liquid fueled MSR, safety is best of any other source. So, we think regulators will lower barriers over time as we prove this.

· Waste management is easier since our waste will be ~5x less mass per kg fuel (~500x less mass per kWh energy), and also returns to natural radioactivity much faster (one or two centuries). We actually plan to sell most of the fission products as useful materials.

· As of now, our reactors are planned to be mostly stainless steel. Most of the lifetime mass-throughput of current GI-GIII fission plants is concrete and steel, of which we have basically none of the concrete and much less steel because no pressure vessel. So, decommissioning is much easier and probably will be internally profitable.

You're right about the last part, because solar will almost definitely get at least 2x cheaper than it is today, and within not more than a few decades.

My perception is biased (ofc), but in my view it's actually very likely that we will reach or surpass our goal, though, so I personally wouldn't bet on renewables.

Thanks. There's been quite the resurgence of interest in salt since it just about disappeared in the 70s or 80s.

I hope you manage it - though I tend to think we'll have a mix of sources rather than making renewables irrelevant. That may be reserve from having heard the "too cheap to meter" slogan a time or two too often. :) Even properly competitive nuclear will make decarbonising far easier, as I'm not at all convinced by grid scale battery, so I hope someone manages...

Yeah, I agree with you completely.

I think we will probably get fission to like 4/5 of the world energy supply and 95% of electricity within our lifetimes.

Solar panels are a great thing to have on your house if you can afford them and want the security in the case of some kind of grid problem. They're also good if you need energy in the middle of nowhere. We want to put fission reactors in most remote communities, even small ones, but if small enough groups of people are going out into uninhabited places it doesn't make sense, so solar panels are better.

I don't really see any utility in wind energy at all, other than in areas where solar doesn't make sense.

Batteries are a really environmentally bad idea for non-transport/device energy supply, because of density. So I think it's best we avoid intermittent sources for most of the grid power.

Wow that's really exciting, I need to pay more attention to nuclear.

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