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Comment by Ericson2314 | Hacker News Reader

The key part is:

> But he soon discovered that the shade from the towering panels above the soil actually helped the plants thrive. That intermittent shade also meant a lot less evaporation of coveted irrigation water. And in turn the evaporation actually helped keep the sun-baked solar panels cooler, making them more efficient.

Solar panels are still way over hyped in a stupid marginalist way, but polyculture has always been a good idea :).

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Solar is hardly over-hyped. It has always over-delivered since the first panels were built in the 19th century. No one predicted such a success and so incredibly low prices even 20 years ago.

Could you explain what you mean by "hyped in a marginalist way"?

I've seen a lot of suggestions that solar can be used as the only energy source for humanity, that we don't need anything else, just build more solar!

That's not realistic. Of course, the limitations that solar has are very much solvable, and having solar is better than not having it. Solar is important, and it is our future.

But the solutions to solar's limitations seem to be in their infancy (new types of storage), hard to scale (battery storage), not really helpful (just build more coal and gas peakers!) or not considered at all. Which does not inspire confidence.

You see this quite a lot. There does come a point where adding more solar … when a certain percentage of your production is already solar … there comes a point where more solar is a whole lot more expensive and less reasonable.

But that’s really more of a “80% of our power is solar” problem and the US isn’t even at 3%. The percentage of usage which could be handled by solar is usually far underestimated.

We don’t need to care about limitations of solar for a long long time.

I agree, however your point about 3% isn’t quite true. Look at the last 12 months rolling and estimated total solar and divide by total electricity and you get about 3.7%:

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

Would 80% be ideal? I would imagine Solar would start getting iffy over 50%.

Presumably you want a lot of hydroelectric, wind, and nuclear so you don't need a lot of batteries, and you have enough sources of power when the sun isn't shining.

Maybe I'm being un-imaginative - but is anyone envisioning a global energy grid so we could have solar energy from Australia and Sahara shipped to North America during our night - and back to Asia and Europe from the Southwest during our day??

^ This seems nonsense science fiction.

> Would 80% be ideal? I would imagine Solar would start getting iffy over 50%.

Depends on how much storage you have. There is very, very little right now so even 50% might be a stretch.

> Maybe I'm being un-imaginative - but is anyone envisioning a global energy grid so we could have solar energy from Australia and Sahara shipped to North America during our night - and back to Asia and Europe from the Southwest during our day??

I'd think you'd need a relatively inexpensive superconducting cable for that to make any sense. Running cables between continents has been a thing for over 150 years, but I'd think resistance losses would make it wildly impractical to power, say, Los Angeles with solar power collected in Australia.

> but I'd think resistance losses would make it wildly impractical to power, say, Los Angeles with solar power collected in Australia.

Allow me to present to you the "Australia-Asia Power Link" [0], exporting solar power a distance of about 4,500km, which is still less than half of LA to Australia, but not insignificant.

What governs the practicality is often more complex than just power loss. Carbon credits, local taxation, and plain ol' bureaucracy can make it more profitable to export than to consume.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link

Grid scale batteries became cost effective within the last year or so, though.

It's at the same point solar/wind were a few years ago when they were the cheapest form of energy but received a lot of criticism for making up a small % of total production.

Naturally that changed.

Resistance losses aren’t a huge problem (standard currently available HVDC can do 3.5% loss per 1000km, or 1-(0.965^20) = 51% loss between opposite points of the planet, which is fine given how cheap PV is).

The cost for both is the big thing: even just assuming overnight electricity replacement, 12 hours * 2 TW * $100/kWh = $2.4 trillion; the 8 GW English Channel link cost $1.6/km[0][1], which a naive scaling up to 20 Mm and 2 TW would cost $8 trillion. Then the question is “which lasts longer, and which is harder to refurbish at end of life?”. (Numbers are just a guideline. On the one hand there is less demand at night and there will probably be wind and geothermal in the mix, on the other hand we want something that allows everyone to have an energy use currently only available to rich people and this doesn’t cover anything except mere electricity).

I have not been able to find the size of the global energy industry in dollars per year to compare this to, only an un-cited claim of “$5 trillion per year … subsidizing the fossil fuel industries”.

That said, at this scale I have to ask about the economics of making an orbital ring, transferring power kinetically in what is essentially a ballistic superconductor[2], and now you can put the PV in space on the ring without having to solve the political aspects of “can I convince everyone else I’ve not sneakily designed my power satellite to be used as a death ray, and can I be sure everyone else’s can’t all be told to collectively focus on one place even if I trust the owners’ intentions?” that usually follows any discussion of space-based solar.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Co...

[1] I’m ignoring converter stations because over 1 Mm they amortise to negligible

[2] i.e. purely classical and without the fun quantum magnetic effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_conduction

South Australia already gets the majority of their energy from renewables [1] [2]. They recently commissioned (end of Oct '21) two synchronous condensers [3] that allow for a reduction in thermal generation for grid frequency support. (EDIT: See my below comment for retraction of this broad statement: "They have the lowest energy costs in Australia"), and have only had an hour or two of outages in the last five years.

[1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-makes-big-leap-t...

[2] https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=1y&interval=1w

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_condenser

https://www.canstarblue.com.au/electricity/average-electrici...

South Australia does not have cheaper electricity bills. We also had a multi-day outage in 2016 which was partially due to wind generators shedding load. Large scale solar also periodically turn off rather than pay to add power to the grid due to too much installed capacity and no suitable storage.

Your link's sources are "Canstar Blue electricity customer satisfaction survey, January 2021." I will argue the reliability of that data source, and you can consult OpenNEM's price data per region (note that Western Australia [SWIS], while on OpenNEM, is not a part of the NEM grid). The blackout you mention was over five years ago, as my comment mentioned ("and have only had an hour or two of outages in the last five years."). Large scale solar does have to curtail when the spot price goes negative, which is leading to the development of new transmission to New South Wales [1]. The price of power frequently goes negative during daylight hours in SA due to an abundance of renewables.

[1] https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2021/09/30/nsw-gives-a...

I would argue actual bills paid (as shown in the camstar data) is important to the average voter vs wholesale price as you have quoted.

I would agree retail rates are more relevant than wholesale rates, while at the same time, there's a lot of noise in what the "average" is. If you're exposed to the spot price (Time of Use plans/tariffs) and judicious about when you use electricity, it will be very cheap. If you are not exposed to the spot price, and/or you use a lot of power when rates are higher, your power will be very expensive. I've spent ~30 minutes looking for a reliable indicator of retail rates for residential customers, and I can't find one other than customer surveys. I did find a release from the SA premier indicating $350 million AUD in electrical energy savings over the last two years [1]. Also, this post [2] asserts SA to have the lowest wholesale rates (per Australian Energy Market Operator/AEMO) in Australia by early next year.

I rescind my statement from my higher level comment that "They have the lowest energy costs in Australia"; the data is incomplete, there are multiple factors at play between generators, transmission, and retail supplier cost variations, and it was too broad of a statement considering all of the factors involved (when I should've referred specifically to wholesale rates influenced by renewables).

[1] https://www.premier.sa.gov.au/news/media-releases/news/bang-...

[2] https://indaily.com.au/news/business/2021/05/10/rise-of-sa-r...

There's a lot more nuance to the 2016 event. Ironically, the wind generators could have saved SA from a multi-hour blackout but the "settings" being used by the wind farms were overly paranoid (in my simple understanding) and caused them to shut-off before their more realistic danger limits were reached.

This is more of a failure of development and regulation of standards, which, I believe, have now been resolved. Said standards had already been developed in countries that had more experience in wind generation than Australia.

The "cause" was unprecedented wind speeds that brought down a few of the big "giraffes" that carry high voltage wires across the state and the interconnectors between states. See article below for example photo.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-28/sa-statewide-blackout...

A lot of good has actually come out of that event, none related to the politicking.

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_South_Australian_blackout

Fun fact, I think Russia has the longest single electric network. So long in fact the network in the East runs a half phase behind the West!

This is the problem, don’t just imagine your guess is correct. Actually look at daily load cycles and solar production variability. Also imagine dynamic pricing causing demand patterns to change, and things like electric vehicle charging which could be done flexibly.

Even now peak demand and peak solar production are fairly close daily.

We’re going to enter an energy economy where production isn’t just instantaneously controlled but supply is going to be a bit more dynamic and pricing is going to reflect that. There have already been demonstrated markets where this has been efficiently handled.

For a while there will be things like occasional negative pricing, but once users figure out how to take advantage of this prices normalize and usage will better match capacity patterns and new power installations will match new demand patterns.

Intuition on what you guess will be the case is a bad way to make arguments about infrastructure. Go look up actual data.

Here's a great video from Real Engineering [0] that goes into the pros and problems with that approach, and where and how it is currently being tried. For example, via undersea transmission cable under the Strait of Gibraltar.

[0] https://youtu.be/7OpM_zKGE4o

> You see this quite a lot. There does come a point where adding more solar … when a certain percentage of your production is already solar … there comes a point where more solar is a whole lot more expensive and less reasonable.

this is a lesson factorio can teach us. from[1]:

"A single solar panel outputs an average of 42 kW over a day and requires 0.84 accumulators to sustain a constant power output through the night.

It takes 23.8 solar panels to operate 1 MW of factory and charge 20 accumulators to sustain that 1 MW through the night."

the rules are contrived and simplistic, but the principles apply. the effectiveness of solar generation varies relative to net consumption rate and storage capacity. of course, some inefficiency may be desirable to avoid severe weather problems, but our imprecise climatalogical models dont positively affirm a sense of impending doom. hard to tell what the correct path is.

[1] https://wiki.factorio.com/Solar_panel

Let me get this right.

You are using numbers from a computer game wiki in a discussion about real world?

Numbers which are by the way off by 2 orders of magnitude. Don't have any nuance in them, don't account for any seasonal variance nor in fact for weather.

It's game-ified and an alien planet. Could be a tool to learn how to think of the problem.

Quick ballpark numbers. Common solar panels are between 15 and 20% efficient. Numbers for the _surface_ of the earth (not the upper atmosphere) are quoted as about 1000W per square meter in a search. I assume that's a peak number.

Since I don't want to think about weather, calculus, or any other factors for a napkin estimate, can we agree that's 8 hours of useful output at 1KW of input power per hour? So over a day 1 meter of solar panel would generate between 1.2 and 1.6 KW / day? I'd also very crudely extend that to 75% of the daily output must exist as a storage buffer. (Gut feeling more than anything else.)

1.2KWd to 1.6KWd of daily generation per square meter.

0.9KW to 1.2KW storage; per square meter for a day.

I have trouble visualizing that though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-cycle_battery Suggests that the discharge should only be to 50% on a regular basis for the most economy of material use (and thus cost). Double the above estimates for the storage bank.

Searching for "deep cycle battery solar" I see many results for 12V 110AH batteries, just a tiny bit more than the 1200KW storage value I guestimated earlier. Around 200 dollars per battery, about 13 x 7 x 8.5 inches (rounded up). So a big honking consumer 'truck' / SUV battery sized deep cycle battery, but double that up for wear prevention.

Though I still prefer baseload generation capacity for industrial and 24/7 loads. Solar can be a good peaker for AC use and waking consumer stuff.

> But the solutions to solar's limitations seem to be in their infancy

We're further along than you think.

Yes, you could run a civilization entirely on solar if you had a robust storage, conversion and distribution system.

After all, the entire fossil fuel reserves of planet Earth were generated over time by photosynthesis, i.e. the solar-powered capture of atmospheric carbon and its reduction to the hydrocarbon state from the carbon dioxide state.

The problem is the scale of the effort needed to replace current generation with solar generatioin. Practically, it would take decades and a vast amount of work. However, there are no technological barriers, and if the world had exhausted its fossil fuel reserves in say, 1970 then we'd already have much of the solar infrastructure in place.

As far as storage solutions, you can find dozens of strategies. My favorite is using solar energy to capture carbon for carbon fiber building materials, 'aerochemical' products (as opposed to petrochemical) for industrial needs (dyes, solvents, etc.) and of course RP1 jet/rocket production. Clearly such an approach will be needed for interplanetary travel as well (Mars seems to have enough CO2 and H2O to make this viable).

It's not surprising that people are so poorly informed, however, as the fossil fuel sector runs massive propaganda operations targeting childhood education onwards.

> Yes, you could run a civilization entirely on solar if you had a robust storage, conversion and distribution system.

Just don't want to let it become a single point of failure. Earth's history is punctuated by periods of low sunlight at sea level.

Storage will be a solved problem once everyone has an electric vehicle with a 65kWh battery sitting in their garage. Power your home overnight from your car, then recharge during the day when the sun comes out.

If you have a large home or need to always have a fully charged car, spend $15k on a home battery.

We need to get out of this mindset that electric utilities will provide unlimited power at a fixed price. With some investment from individual homeowners we can reduce peak to average ratios for utilities and make it much cheaper and possible to use intermittent green energy sources like wind and solar.

> everyone has an electric vehicle with a 65kWh battery sitting in their garage.

That's a solution I hope that neither I nor my children live to see. It's a solution I hope never happens unless a new battery technology arrives that for a start eliminates our need to once again fuck over some very poor countries in order to get our hands on rare resources. Lithium battery tech is quite miraculous, but it's also not appropriate as the basis for the entire electrification of human civilization.

Also, lots of people will have neither cars nor garages.

> unless a new battery technology arrives that for a start eliminates our need to once again fuck over some very poor countries

It is already here. Google LFP batteries.

I’m a big fan of LFP don’t get me wrong, but it still requires mining and refining lithium, which indeed does fuck over the environment quite badly

https://nbcpalmsprings.com/2021/04/29/salton-sea-lithium-gol...

I can’t vouch for this of my own knowledge but as lithium is such a light element it is sensible that it would be easy to find and use.

Compared to, say, steel or aluminum, what is the increased damage? I've read every single documentary news article, read reports from governmental agencies, and I still don't know what's so bad about lithium. Particularly compared to standard extraction of other resources that nobody ever talks about.

Especially oil. Oil and coal and natural gas have horrifying consequences for local environments all the time, and nobody ever talks about that. From fly ash ponds to spills to destroyed drinking water. If there was anything remotely as bad as that, wouldn't any of these articles I have read pointed out the damage? Literally the worst lithium story is political, not environmental, in that indigenous people are not being given enough compensation for their land, or not given enough input.

Cobalt has stories of child labor at artisanal mines, but again that is political, not environmental damage, and the environmental damage is the same as from all the other parts that go into the grid, or a car, and they don't have the horrifying consequences of fossil fuel extraction.

If I'm wrong, and there is something I don't know,I will be forever grateful for a pointer to clear documentation of this environmental damage you speak of. But I have been asking this question for years, and searching for years, and nobody, literally nobody, has pointed me to anything concrete. Just vague assertions at best. Which is not what environmental damage looks like. Environmental damage is specific, horrifying, and all too often swept under the rug as long as its wealthy fossil fuel companies doing it.

Erm, have you heard of

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery

No technical recolution needed, no rare elements needed, no invasions nedded, just plain salt, iron and copper. They are just bigger in size.

And for some reasons not really known so this whole discussion feels a bit off.

>Storage will be a solved problem once everyone has an electric vehicle with a 65kWh battery sitting in their garage. Power your home overnight from your car, then recharge during the day when the sun comes out.

Too bad you'll be driving to the office on business days.

When the issue is "how do we generate enough power" it doesn't really matter where the car is.

That just complicates distribution a little, but not a whole lot.

> then recharge during the day when the sun comes out.

Unless you actually need the car during the day..

Then you buy a home battery, as he said?

It feels that people can get a bit unimaginative when talking about the future of cars or solar or, in this case, a combination of both. "What if I drive the car to work? I guess this whole solar-battery scheme falls apart."

FWIW, the people I know with EVs have solar panels and a home battery.

I hope to get an electric car soon, and it would be great to be able to charge at work - even if I had a home battery. And I'm sure there will be programs to encourage businesses to get chargers into car parks around here in the next few years - and since cars are parked for a fair while, it can just be slow charging like 7 kW single phase (I guess it would make sense to also have two or so fast charging spaces for when people need it)

Charging at work would be ideal - it would all basically happen 100% in solar hours. My work has solar on its roof itself, I'm sure more and more places will, so it all really makes sense. And that way I could basically run my house 100% off a battery, whereas charging an electric car from a home battery would probably mean I'd still have to buy a fair bit of power from the grid.

But yeah, the story basically is that it's all possible and not that hard.

Then you get a separate battery. But the vast majority only drives their car back and forth to work, so most of the day the cars are just standing there and could be charged.

If we’re speculating about the future, having cars sit by idly all day seems like a good target for disruption.

I’d like to believe we’ll get to the point where we share self driving vehicles or own some that go on about their day producing profit.

The cars could also charge themselves in the process.

All it would take is one person smoking in their shared car to ruin it for the rest of us.

Once a vehicle (or a home) has been smoked in, you can never completely get the smell out.

It makes me nauseous to sit in that smell for any length of time.

For around two years I’m constantly using shared cars via apps. I’ve had almost zero issues. If the car is dirty or smells you can review it and one would assume repeat offenders get booted off.

The shared-everything vision of the future ignores the extent to which people's cars serve as extensions of their home and storage. Having a bunch of stuff always available when you need it, and knowing that nobody else will stink up the place, means that personally owned cars will remain popular for a very long time.

Im all for having a more robust ecosystem of shared vehicles. But it does make me think of the rough physical state of shared scooters and bikes in my neighborhood...

Hotels have solved that problem by simply prohibiting smoking in most rooms, and if you get caught doing it anyway, they’ll charge you a high fee to sanitise the room.

> We need to get out of this mindset that electric utilities will provide unlimited power at a fixed price.

We already pay spot price here in Norway.

And large parts of Texas.

How much variability do you see in spot prices? Are there any alternatives?

It looks like 90%+ of electricity produced in Norway is hydro, with fossil fuels only around 2% [1]. Hydroelectric plants are very quick to respond to changes in demand.

From what I can see, it probably isn't a huge surprise bill risk to the consumer compared to places like, say, Texas.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Norway

It's fun you ask, because for the first time in many years we have seen quite a interest in the spot price, because it has reached the record high of 0.35usd/kWh (but mostly it stays around 0.12usd/kWh). This has been a record dry automn, combined with very high prices in the UK and Europe (and we export/import power, which affects prices here). You can get all other kind of pricing schemes as well, but as with insurance in general, on average you are going to be best off with spot price if you can stomach the ups and downs.

The real idea is not using cars for storage but end of life car batteries AND simply using the same factories that make car batteries to make grid batteries. AND, since vehicles will be a significant source of our electricity demand, we can use them as "storage" simply by not charging them at some times.

I think most people don't realize that V2G tech is old (Chademo supported it, and older Leafs can already do it natively, and they're about a decade old), but it's expensive. You basically need a DC charger for every car that will be doing V2G. Look up how much a DC charger is, and you can get something like a dedicated Powerwall for the same price...

Hence why Tesla sells Powerwalls instead of supporting V2G. There are also subsidies for Powerwalls from a variety of entities, and they can be orchestrated in concert to create a virtual power plant. V2G for anything other than emergency power is unnecessary complexity.

Yet Tesla attempts to do it, too, with autobidder

I think using the car batteries as storage also makes a lot of sense. Suppose technology improves so that cars have ~double the capacity they have now (~150kwh), then that’s super useful for long car journeys, but most people only do short journeys each day. So you could use the excess for storage. And they’d be plenty considering the average household in the uk only uses 10kwh a day (although admittedly that’s factoring in gas heating which will need to be replaced)

Not all of us have a garage or a car for that matter (nor a place to put a large battery).

Those for whom that is the case probably live in a dense urban core which is surrounded by hundreds of thousands of detached single family homes for whom it is not.

In any case, it's not hard to imagine that XX kWh onsite battery reserves will end up as a standard condo feature in the future same as hot water or a weight room.

How often will I need to replace my battery set?

Tesla Powerwall has a 10 year warranty. If thats based on actual expected life and not just a marketing thing, its not too unreasonable.

And in 15-20 years when it's replaced, it's likely the replacement will cost a tenth of current prices. Batteries are getting so much cheaper every year that I'm delaying purchasing only because I don't want to lock in today's prices, and I'm hoping for an aggregated demand response solution that can start paying me for battery usage as well. Just being able to island my house and ride out a blackout isn't as much of an incentive at the moment.

>But the solutions to solar's limitations seem to be in their infancy (new types of storage), hard to scale (battery storage), not really helpful (just build more coal and gas peakers!) or not considered at all. Which does not inspire confidence.

You're not wrong, but also not right. We have renewables that run at night (wind, water, geo-thermal heat pumps), we have some storage solutions/"batteries" as well, such as pumping stations or water-based heat storage. And even peakers that burn fuel are not that bad for the environment if you only run them a limited time. Coal/gas peakers that only run when needed would not kill the environment if the main sources of energy production are renewable - a coal plant burning only some nights is still a lot better than one burning 24/7 - and peakers can be fueled by renewable sources as well, not just stuff you dig out of the ground, making them carbon neutral over the grow-burn circle.

The problem right now is that switching over to such a mixed energy production requires a lot of investment and construction, and we have a lot of infrastructure (especially housing) that cannot be easily retrofitted. E.g. right now, be it in the US, be it in Germany where I live, be it in other places, solar and wind deployment is severely hampered by the lack of transmission lines. This isn't a problem of high investment cost either, it's "locals" fighting tooth and nail against new transmission lines being build in the vicinity of where they live because "it ruins the view".

Battery storage seems eminently scalable compared to other energy developments. A commodity that can be manufactured in a factory and that we would need anyway for cars. Small components that can be built into enclosures, and racked in a container. And the sites are nice and simple. A fence, some substation gear, a concrete pad.

Particularly nuclear.

Not true. Check out https://model.energy

I think you have not looked at all the of EV vehicles currently being built and how much of a change those vehicles are going to have on the power grid 1. a large portion of the batteries in those vehicles are going to find 2nd lives as stationary battery storage. 2. The vehicles themselves are also storage.

There are proven, scalable technologies for storing large amounts of energy. For overnight storage you can melt salt. For seasonal storage you can make Methane (or Hydrogen). Every country has strategic gas storage infrastructure already built. Batteries are only interesting because they might become cheaper than these.

Currently we don't store large amounts of energy because it's cheaper not to, not because it's impossible to build the necessary infrastructure.

It is now cheap to store using batteries. It just hasnt been that way for very long.

That depends on the scale I think. It's getting close to economical for private electricity use, but we're still pretty far away from the manufacturing capabilities that would allow us to store a week of power for the whole grid. And even further away if you also include energy that is currently not supplied as electricity (e.g. for heating).

It's economical to combine it with solar/wind on the grid. Both California and Hawaii are doing this right now. This form of energy is about 1/3 the cost per MWh of nuclear (as opposed to solar/wind alone which is about 1/6th the cost). It just hasnt been that cheap for very long.

Hydro as storage, better grid interconnects, demand shaping (e.g. using smart storage heaters that turn on when electricity is cheap) can bring down the cost still further.

> low prices

This is the stupid marginal ism I am talking about.

Cranking out more solar panels is easy. Actually making the grids larger or have more storage requires the type of planning competence and cordination we suck at.

Solar panels are popular precisely because they don't require that planning competence and coordination. So if we go full solar wind, we will slam into a wall we are utterly unprepared for, despite, yes, getting better at solar and wind themselves with volume.

Going full solar and wind is going to take some time(20 year-ish?) and in the meantime energy storage will get there in terms of scale and cost.

LiFePO4 packs already started trading below $100/kWh in 2020:

https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/a-no-go-fantasy-writing-...

CATL is pushing sodium-ion batteries:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/catls-new-sodium-ion...

You don't even need a lot of storage to greatly increase maximum stable solar and wind share.

Exiting times ahead of us.

Our electric grids aren't designed for distributed generation- they are centrally planned and maintained.

Every person that generates their own electricity stops paying their fair share of maintaining the grid, forcing poorer people who cannot afford their own rooftops to subsidize them. It is actually quite regressive- the denser the population center, the less electricity per person can be generated by solar. The electricity might be free, but the cost of maintaining the grid never goes away.

> Every person that generates their own electricity stops paying their fair share of maintaining the grid

This isn't true, at least not in Colorado. I pay a number of fees for maintaining the grid and these aren't going away when I have my net meter installed later this week. (hopefully)

That's a policy problem, not a technological problem. It becomes a political decision: convert grid maintenance to a progressive tax, subsidize local power generation for poor families or rental properties, etc.

> Every person that generates their own electricity stops paying their fair share of maintaining the grid

"their fair share." What exactly is that for something you don't use?

This is a bit like saying everyone who walks/bikes to work stops paying their fair share of gas taxes that maintain the roads their food arrives on.

In this hypothetical, they are still using the Grid to power their homes at night

You added that part.

> This is a bit like saying everyone who walks/bikes to work stops paying their fair share of gas taxes that maintain the roads their food arrives on.

I haven't seen people argue this point for people who don't own a car, but my state does have a special levy on electric and high efficiency vehicles to make up for lost gas tax revenues: https://www.dmv.virginia.gov/vehicles/#highwayuse_fee.asp

They actually do. Gas taxes pay about 60% of the costs to maintain the road infrastructure and given that the damage caused to roads increases as the square of the vehicle's weight, walking/biking causes minimal wear and is offset by the 40% of road costs that come from general taxes.

> Every person that generates their own electricity stops paying their fair share of maintaining the grid,

Nope. Not in California- even if solar covers 100% of your usage, PG&E is collecting money from you. You don’t pay any energy production costs, but you’ll pay ‘your fair share’.

You're confusing cost with billing structure.

When you go with net metering you still pay a bit, but PG&E sources power at around 10 cents per kwh. The rest of the bill people receive is for infrastructure - around 2/3rds of their bill. They do this to incentivize people to use less electricity.

California's net metering is not sustainable for forever, and you are not paying for the infrastructure you're using. Which I don't have a problem with, it's just something that can't continue forever.

Here in EU the energy prices are separate from distribution grid. In fact distribution grid is forbidden to sell you energy at all by law. So there are months where I pay more for a monthly standing fee for having a connection than I pay for energy. And they charge for energy transmission on top of it.

Anyway, in my country for historical reasons all of the electricity production was in one corner of the country. So if any of the generation moves away from there (and remembering that electricity always takes the shortest possible path [0] from producer to consumer) any new generation in any other part than the original producer lowers the demand on the grid.

[0] or to be more precise the lowest resistance

I keep seeing this, but every power bill I've ever seen has a monthly connection fee. With solar panels, that connection fee is frequently higher than the consumed power charges.

Isn't that paying for the grid?

There is no fair share to be paid

If the market rewards battery storage it will get built quickly.

Think about the scale and complexity of the current gasoline and natural gas infrastructure. Pipelines, pumping stations, tanker trucks, super tankers, floating cities to drill under the oceans, massice refineries all over the globe, and on and on.

Yes some people exist who don’t understand the scale of effort needed to get a grid ready to work with just solar and wind and little else. But humanity has done this before.

Building and shipping solar panels costs energy and material resources.

That’s true but it’s also true for fossil and nuclear fuels.

Doesn't everything? It's not an issue so long as across it's life it results in less carbon production than alternative sources do per kW

And in a 100% solar economy, the energy to build and ship the panels would be solar. This is fine, as they output enough energy to make themselves in 1-4 years depending on which study you look at.

Using energy still generates heat, as per the laws of thermodynamics.

Yes, and?

Perhaps they are mixing up the “there is therefore a maximum safe rate of worldwide energy use (however far away we are from that)” point with the “CO2 emissions from fossil fuels contribute to greenhouse effect” point, and...

ok, I’m not sure either

Converting sunlight to electric energy and then using that energy generates the exact same amount of heat as if that sunlight was simply absorbed by the ground without the solar panel being in the way, as per the laws of thermodynamics.

That depends on albedo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo

Though, if the solar panels absorb more energy than the ground, due to the ground reflecting more of the light, that’s still a little bit of difference, right?

(Not a knock on solar panels, I’m just being pedantic)

This is where I am curious to see if solar panels cover city rooftops can help - not entirely mitigate but help - with city heat island effects.

By absorbing the energy to then use it - say to run aircon - it should be better than having the surroundings absorb it and then pump in more energy from outside to mitigate it.

Which is accounted for by the energy payback time, which is generally less than 5 years since the nineties: https://www.bnl.gov/pv/files/pdf/PE_Magazine_Fthenakis_2_10_...

Current estimates are around 1 year for southern Europe and 1.2 years for northern Europe: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p...

What's not accounted for is decreasing EROI on mining the minerals needed to construct panels and the fact that the average lifespan of a panel is 2-3 decades (and the efficiency decreases with age) and then what? We have no recycling solutions in place. The amount of energy it would take to actually fully recycle these panels throws a big wrench in that calculation. We're already in the midst of a solar waste crisis and it's about to magnify significantly as these panels start dying out

And then of course there's the massive cost of batteries and all the mining and recycling issues associated with that

And what about the amount of space they take up relative to other energy sources? What about the costs of cleaning up all the lead and cadmium that leak into the environment?

Panels are almost exclusively sand. Should we run out of one of the things needed to make solar panels a recycling market will pop up. I also think you need to check your lifespan numbers. Solar panels degrade much slower than that, if they get thrown out after 20 years that has silly reasons like they stop getting subsidies after 20 years. There is a healthy market for used solar panels.

We don't have 'no' recycling solutions in place... There are currently at least six companies doing it in my country (Australia), surely we're not the only place this happens...

Also, please note that panels that contain cadmium are, I believe, around or less than 10% of solar panels produced.

Everything in your comment is false. That's an impressive performance.

There's no decreasing EROI on mining sand and bauxite.

The average lifespan of a panel is more like 60 years; 2-3 decades is just the design life. Of course some panels are defective.

Efficiency asymptotes to about 70% of initial efficiency.

There are a number of recycling solutions in place.

Making PV panels from PV panels takes less energy than making them from raw materials and not more.

There is no solar waste crisis.

There will be no solar waste crisis.

These panels aren't going to start dying out.

Batteries cost less than panels and have routinely been recycled for decades, because recycling them is lucrative.

The amount of space PV generation and batteries take up is irrelevantly tiny.

Modern solar panels and lithium-ion batteries contain no cadmium. PV panels do contain irrelevantly tiny amounts of metallic lead, which does not normally pose an environmental risk.

Cadmium telluride solar panels do contain cadmium, but they are no longer in wide use, because they cost too much to compete with polysilicon; because they are thin-film panels, the amount of cadmium they contain is irrelevantly tiny, and it is poorly soluble.

Discarded lead-acid batteries do not pose a significant environmental threat even if they fail to be recycled, because the lead they contain is not mobile.

I am at a loss as to how you managed to write a comment like this without accidentally slipping up and writing at least one statement that was correct.

Solar still relies on fossil fuels (coal!) and other rare earth metals that will be not be sustainable for many years (if ever). Solar prices are dropping, but I don't see how we ever fully divest from fossil fuels.

That's not true - basically no commercial solar panels contain rare earth metals (the place they're actually used is in permanent magnets in electric motors and generators for things like electric cars and wind turbines, maybe you were confusing that? But there's a lot of interest in eliminating those, e.g. e-motors).

Solar panels don't rely on fossil fuels either - perhaps you're confused by reporting that currently they're produced using a fair bit of energy from coal etc.? But that is reducing and improving all the time as grids get greener.

No, they directly use coal and silicon to produce solar panels. And panels only last ~10 years. So there is a constant need for fossil fuels.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335083312_Why_do_we...

None of this is correct.

>>since the first panels were built in the 19th century.

? Any interesting things to point me at on this topic?

---

This says 1954

https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200904/physicshisto...

---

Let me know if you have something else.

Non-silicon cells are older, but still fall in the 20th century[1]. Maybe copper oxide cells are older still?

[1] https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/10/how-to-build-a-low...

>Charles Fritts installed the first solar panels on New York City rooftop in 1884

>created the first solar cell by coating selenium with a thin layer of gold

from https://brewminate.com/a-brief-history-of-solar-panels-since...

EU is experiencing surge in electricity prices, thanks to green idiocity. Wind and solar subsidized so heavy, nuclear closing, coal bad. But double the price of electricity is fine!

This is fundamentally wrong on so many levels.

Let's just pretend you would have any resemblance of a point there: Firstly, renewables are much cheaper than fossil or nuclear power - both in construction and operation. Secondly, the surging electricity prices, at least speaking for Germany here, are a result of the idiotic "EEG-Umlage".

The price surge is mostly due to natural gas prices and increased, unexpected higher demand [1].

Countries that have access to renewables are actually doing much better than others!

> Since most countries still rely on fossil fuels to meet all their power demands, the final price of electricity is often set by the price of coal or natural gas. If gas becomes more expensive, electricity bills inevitably go up, even if clean, cheaper sources also contribute to the total energy supply.

[1] https://www.euronews.com/2021/10/28/why-europe-s-energy-pric...

> coal bad

I agree on nuclear, but let's talk coal. Your point is that coal is good?

That's a completely false statement. Nothing about it is true.

The whole world is experiencing surges in electricity prices, not just the EU.

Even within the EU, countries like France, which gets up to 70% of its energy from nuclear power, has rising electricity prices.

Subsidizing wind and solar has nothing to do with this. Stop spreading lies.

> Solar panels are still way over hyped

It literally turns abundantly free solar energy into electricity. Where is the hype?

Current solar panels are almost 20% efficient. Even in the most outrageous sci-fi scenario, they could only hope to be 5x more efficient than they are currently, and in any case would require significant land use. Compared to nuclear or geothermal, the ceiling is so much lower.

And then we get all the vaporware viral ops like solar freaking roadways and those water bottles that magically refill from the air with a tiny solar panel, ignoring the laws of thermodynamics but making hella kickstarter bux

Solar takes much space compared to what? Oil wells and refineries? Gas wells and processing and pipelines? Coal mine and power plant?

Solar can be squeezed into lots of unused spaces, e.g. where I live all new Lidl and Aldi have solar on their roofs, an otherwise empty and unused gray space.

Like most things, the final answer is probably a mix of everything.

When you count for buffer land around nuclear (most don't want to live too close) land use becomes comparable to solar

For example, look at Diablo Canyon site acreage vs the acreage of the new large-scale solar project in Pahrump, NV.

That buffer land can be forest and lots of living creatures. Not a solar panel covered wasteland.

Animals and plants are perfectly happy living under solar panels.

We're commenting on an article about solar panels covering a productive farm. Need not be a wasteland.

Solar installations are generally not placed where there'd otherwise be a forest, at least not where I live. I've usually seen them in deserts (where living creatures would appreciate the shade) or the sort of land people would've already considered wasteland.

The cool thing about solar is you can fix it on top of current infrastructure. Sure the solar roadways are a ridiculous idea, but putting solar panels on roofs actually makes use of space they can't be used otherwise

And if you have good credit the Sun pays for it. You borrow money, put up panels, and then pay the loan with your electricity and gas budget. Still two weeks away from actual final hook up from the power company but friends with similar have that experience.

There are so many public spaces that would benefit from more shade, where the cost of building that shade could be offset significantly by having solar panels on the top. I'm thinking about things like public parks, car parks, open-air malls, etc.

I am increasingly seeing this exact thing put into practice, but it kind of blows my mind that the uptake has been so slow.

And putting solar on roofs tend to reduce cooling costs by a few percent for a building due to the shade.

We have a need for ceilings. When you account for that the amount of space needed provide ceilings, powering our civilization with solar is a negative number rather than a positive number. Negative, because we can more then power our civilization with existing space through dual purpose structures. An example of this is a solar roof. However, even if you ignore that potential, the amount of space needed is only a few square miles. It's not like it would be the size of a country or even the size of a state. The amount of space is small enough to place in some remote desert and for all intents and purposes to then forget about it.

>would require significant land use

you're commenting on an article about a solution to that.

Look at this with satellite view enabled. That's 1.5MW installed capacity right there: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Laudeley+Betriebstechnik/@...

That peak capacity seems a bit high, and just isn't very helpful if there's any volume of solar on the grid. Some back of the envelope calculations for mean output:

Total area: ~5000m²

Annual mean insolation: ~100W/m²

Solar panel efficiency: 20%

Annual mean power output = 5000*100*0.2 = 100kW

And on top of that, you still need either energy storage or rapid on-demand generation (e.g. gas fired) to get you through the Dunkelflauten.

What do you do when it's cloudy?

Use other forms of electricity generation?

In addition to using other forms of energy, you can also over provision. Solar panels still work when it’s cloudy. They just don’t produce as much power. And with a grid you can average cloud cover over a large area.

That's why we have an electricity grid, it's not cloudly all the time all across the world, so even if we went full solar I don't see how it'd be problematic.

Thankfully when it’s cloudy, your peak loads from AC are a lot lower.

> Solar panels are still way over hyped in a stupid marginalist way

Talk more about this, I’d be very interested to understand your thoughts

How's what I wrote in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29219258 ? Conversely see what I wrote in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29212004 about more capital intensive power generation that if done at a good scale would drown current demand.

>Solar panels are still way over hyped in a stupid marginalist way

Solar panels are powered by fusion, of course they are hyped.

a lot of pressure to not go solar and the whole overhype movement i've seen was mainly endorsed by those with vested interest in other forms of energy. big oil, coal, nuclear etc. there's a lot of energy we are not harvesting due to battery technology. hell we can honestly pull energy out of the air during a storm, it would make the area safer because lightning itself could be used as a way to charge up batteries. but the batteries are just not there, there are very cheap ways of storing energy though, gravity being one of those primitive technologies. pumping water up a spout etc. but i don't think solar itself will be all we need, i agree with that part. but we have a lot of unused energy that we can take advantage of if people allow their mind to explore new sources of renewables

The hype is going to die down the more we see landscapes and entire mountains being covered with non-recyclable, toxic panels:

https://twitter.com/ScienceIsNew/status/1458512267150966786

It strikes me as environmental vandalism. Solar panels make sense on roofs, not so much on landscapes. Maybe the desert, but you have transmission loss and still have to deal with the large amount of toxic landfill they generate. Nuclear makes much more sense for anything approaching base load.

Putting them in landfill implies is it harder to turn old PV into new PV than to build new PV literally out of rock. This does not seem plausible in long-term (short term, sometime has to actually build a factory to do it), and if it was true then we would’ve just substituted one polluting non-renewable (fossils) for another.

I assume you wring your hands just as much for mountain removal for coal? Or the coal ash ponds so toxic they kill workers by the dozen when they need to be cleaned up? Or the millions of lives whose health is damaged by fossil fuel externalities?

By all means we should have frank discussions of the externalities of various technologies.

Correct, coal is worse. But notice I said nuclear is the way to go.

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