Solar energy in Israel: It's a knockout | Hacker News Reader

Solar energy in Israel: It's a knockout

economist.com

18 pointsmblakele15 comments

Just goes to show, it's only a matter of time before enough breakthroughs occur that solar power overtakes fossil fuels.

How much of this is scientific breakthroughs and how much is the climate? Israel is hot and sunny for most of the year, the same is not true of the upper Midwest US for example.

There are plenty of places that are dry and sunny, and if solar cells are used there, it'll push down the price of other fuels in the rest of the world.

Is not most energy consumed in places that are not dry and sunny? On account of the correlation between clouds, rain, irrigation and people.

This was T. Boone's mistake: overestimating the portability of electricity.

I believe that (expensive, politically problematic) high voltage DC lines can transmit electricity across the US (or europe, or china) with minimal losses. The more serious problem may be that the sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day. Though that can probably be tackled by charging all our electric cars during the day, building dams for pumped storage, charging different rates for electricity at different times, etc.

So, if solar has a cost per KWH the same as coal, it will hugely expand, but it won't put coal out of business unless it becomes even cheaper (or coal becomes more expensive).

German companies are investing $555 billion on a huge solar farm in the Sahara to supply electricity back to Europe: http://www.solarfeeds.com/recharge-news/7540-german-group-to...

> The more serious problem may be that the sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day.

Can someone in the Eastern hemisphere confirm this? ;-)

T.Boone's mistake was backing McCain in the presidential election. I lost trust in him when he was willing to back policies that were polar opposite to what he claims to be in favor of.

Based on a quick glance at the data here:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/states/hf.jsp?incfile=sep_sum/pl...

Florida, Texas, and California seem to be the leaders of the energy-use pack by a large margin (making up ~25% of the nation's energy consumption).

In my mind those three are the sunniest of states, leading me to the very unscientific conclusion that most energy IS consumed in dry/sunny places.

They are certainly sunny states, but they also account for ~25% of the nation's population. California, Texas, and Florida have the 1st, 2nd, and 4th largest state populations respectively.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_populati...

Israel for the most part (then again the Negav Desert is 1/3 of Israel) is not exceptionally hot and sunny. But Israel does have an exceptional motivation to be energy independent. It is a county in the middle east with no oil surrounded by political enemies with oil. When there is a will and that will is backed by cost, there is a way.

None of Israel's direct neighbors is even close to being a significant oil producer - those are mostly in the Arabian peninsula.

I used 'neighbors' very loosely, speaking more about Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc. But you are right.

   Oil Produced: (Wolfram Alpha)
   Israel       |     5 966   bbl/day  (barrels per day)
   Syria        |   381 600   bbl/day  (barrels per day)
   Egypt        |   664 000   bbl/day  (barrels per day)
   Saudi Arabia | 9 200 000   bbl/day  (barrels per day)

Israel for the political reasons can not afford for its economy to rely on exported oil from Arab states. I'm not even sure if Iran, Saudi Arabia, or the UAE would be willing to export oil to Israel. It's expensive to import it from farther so Israel spends 73.43B/year on oil imports[1]. The opportunity cost of not developing alternatives has been high so solar panels are already a part of the infrastructure (ie: to heat the water in almost every single home).

[1] http://www16.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=oil+import+israel

Reason #179 for why we need to upgrade our national grid system.

Yeah, but there's a companion angle to this. Carr explains well in "The Big Switch" about why centrally generated power made economic sense. But it only made sense just because the technology catered to that solution. It may be the case that, as with computer technology, market and materials drive costs of solar technology to zero. Then you might have peer cooperatives set up for sharing the load of home power consumption. Panels might become so cheap that whole neighborhoods go off the grid, or install their own distribution system. Decentralization of power generation becomes more economical than centralized power generation.

I watched some alternative energy documentary one time that had one of the contributors suggesting that half of all the roofs in Cali would have to be covered with panels to take care of the state's power needs. Uh well, ok.

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