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Comment by AtlasBarfed | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that massive amounts of PV is needed to replace existing fossil fuels, so these would be extending the carbon output of coal/natural gas.

If AI training is being that power hungry, maybe we shouldn't be doing it ... right now.

It's all fueled by speculative VC funding. This isn't a slam dunk economics calculation, certainly no more than regulation to shut this nonsense down would be.

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That makes sense if PV deployment is limited by supply. But the solar industry is currently limited by demand. You can see it in market news for solar components:

"Wafer prices stable-to-soft on market oversupply"

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/03/15/wafer-prices-stable-t...

"Wacker Chemie’s sales, earnings fall in tough market"

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/01/30/wacker-chemies-sales-...

"China polysilicon prices fall 51.8% year-on-year amid supply glut"

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/01/19/china-polysilicon-pri...

"China solar cell prices decline on sluggish downstream demand"

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/01/05/china-solar-cell-pric...

I thought building new solar plants was cheaper than operating existing gas and coal plants. What’s hold up on building solar capacity as fast as we can, saturating demand? Permitting? Capital deployment in utility markets?

It's not a replacement for the cost of operating existing gas and coal plants; building up new solar capacity enables you to burn less gas or coal at the times when the sun is shining and thus cut its fuel costs, but it does not enable you to shut down the plant and cut any its other operating costs, because you still need the same capacity for e.g. winter evenings when at peak daily consumption there is zero sunlight.

In the United States, I think that permitting, interconnection queue backlogs [1], and political efforts to protect legacy coal against cheaper competition [2] are the biggest obstacles.

That said, the US had its best-ever year for solar deployment in 2023, and this year is projected to be even better: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61424

[1] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/grid-interconnection-queue-...

[2] https://montanafreepress.org/2023/06/03/the-battle-for-clean...

The problem with renewables is that most people talking about replacing fossil with renewables don't understand how the grid actually works.

What we need the most is better storage technologies. PV, wind and hydro are highly variable which means you need something to cover the gaps between production and demand. Gas and coal plants are actually super useful for this because you can literally scale production up or down as needed by increasing or reducing fuel. If you want to eliminate gas and coal, you need a way to store excess energy and release it on demand - and to be able able to do so at the same scale as with fossil.

And nuclear power is actually worse in this regard because you effectively can't turn a nuclear power plant on or off. If it's on, it must remain on because taking it offline can take days and the same goes for turning it back on. But the problem right now is not lack of production but stability. And stability can only be achieved with better storage technologies - or fossil fuels.

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