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Comment by churchill | Hacker News Reader

100KM² of panels (10GW) will generate 22,000 GWh, or roughly 10% of Taiwan's current electricity demand. That is, a 10KM * 10KM field (not necessarily all in on place) that takes up just 0.3% of the island is all you need.

Last year, TSMC used 25,000GWh, or 12.5% of Taiwan's electricity, so a 10GW solar project like stated above will take care of it.

If you need dollar figures: Chinese PV prices have dropped to 10 cents/watt while LFP cells are down to $53/kwh. So, $1b will get you 10GW worth of panels, while $4.4b will get you 8 hours of storage. So, roughly $10b to completely go off grid.

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Something must be wrong in your estimates, the biggest solar farm is ~60sqkm and only 2.2gw, it's in India and definitely get much more sun than taiwan

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhadla_Solar_Park

https://globalsolaratlas.info/map

Edit: nvm it's not the biggest anymore, but still you need at least 2x to 3x the area to get to 10gw and that's with much better settings that's what Taiwan offers

The area needed depends somewhat on where the panels are located, the north/east don't see a ton of sun for about half the year. Also, 70+% of TW is covered by mountains and dense forest. I don't mean to say it's impossible (I'd like to see a lot more solar), just that the economics aren't as good as other places.

I also wonder if building for typhoon conditions affects construction costs significantly.

$10b seems impossibly low to go fully off-grid, I expect real estate costs would dwarf panel/battery/construction costs. TSMC isn't stupid, so I assume they've explored the options in this area.

Would they be able to procure that many panels from China when they know they'll end up in Taiwan though?

China seems happy to export solar panels to anyone.. Taiwan would probably not like to be a big importer of something it can't procure from other trade partners at similar prices though. I think Taiwan wants tariff wars with China to reduce economic ties.

China and Tawain do trade despite the situation

Taiwan's money spends just as good as anyone's money. That's why Europe is still burning Russian gas while in a proxy war that's seen hundreds of thousands killed. It's only in Hollywood movies that you refuse perfectly good money for geopolitics.

> It's only in Hollywood movies that you refuse perfectly good money for geopolitics.

So why did Russia stop delivering gas via Nord Stream 1 from 09/2022 on (before the sabotage)?

Because they weren't getting paid in "perfectly good money" (they were getting paid into frozen EU bank accounts).

Am I wrong to say that north stream 1 & 2 were put out of commission and Europe procures it’s gaz now via LNG that flows via the huge terminals that were built after 2022?

The Russians are managing to bypass restrictions to some degree using their “dark fleet” but that’s oil, and hardly a case of Europe continuing as if nothing were.

After two comments saying I was wrong, I decided to google “does Europe import LNG from Russia”

First result is a detailed page from the European Union, showing amongst others a diagram that EU imports from Russia were divided by three.

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/eu-gas-suppl...

Of course the EU could lie, but that seems unlikely. It could also be that Russia is selling to the EU without the EU knowing it. For oil that is almost certainly the case to some extent. For LNG you need very specific infrastructure (boats, terminals) that are not compatible with the famous “dark fleet”.

Russia is probably selling the gaz to someone else, or at least trying to. But in that case at a discounted price and with less margin because pipelines cannot be improvised, so they have to use more expensive means of transport.

Mind you those figures were 2023 and they will have reduced even more most likely. But Europe is still buying gaz to some extent.

There are other routes.

One of them, still active until this December when the contract ends, is through Ukraine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%932023_Russia%E2%80...

No, but we still buy Russian LNG

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