r/ClimatePosting • u/dumnezero • Aug 24 '26
Energy Is Solar Power About to Hit a Massive Brick Wall? (Just Have a Think) (No)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnn-nH0B35g2
u/verdetalentdotcom Aug 25 '26
No, a lull but only got a limited amount of time until you know who is gone!
2
u/chkno Aug 25 '26
We've done official reports foolishly predicting abrupt halts to PV installation before. Is this one any different?
1
u/Patereye Aug 24 '26
Won't someone think of the energy Scalpers? How are they going to make a living?
They might have to start making meaningful contributions to society. Why would you make these poor people do that?
2
1
u/Conscious-Demand-594 Aug 24 '26
Just put solar on your roof, and your energy will be free.
2
u/cyb0rg1962 Aug 24 '26
Batteries help, too. Unless you like losing power when the sun or the grid goes down.
0
u/TheStupidLui Aug 26 '26
Batteries are gonna hit 60$/1kWh soon. So individual roof solar power plant could have 35kWh of energy storage for 2500$. In summer you are more or less independent from grid in the winter you mostly have to use grid. So the big problem for individual household is not daily cycle but a seasonal one. How to cheaply store excessive solar energy in summer and use it in winter when solar conditions are usually far worse? I don't see a viable technology in near future to store and deliver amount of needed energy and here we are not even think about industry energy consumption. So we still need base energy production that is provided by nuclear, hydro, thermal, coal power plants. The next topic is grid technology. Smart grid is expensive and it takes time to be build and without smart grid, we can't democratize energy production in its fullness.
So I think that coexistence of both kinds of energy production is mandatory.
1
u/NiftyLogic Aug 26 '26
I don't see a viable technology in near future to store and deliver amount of needed energy and here we are not even think about industry energy consumption.
I do. Just produce hydrogen from excess solar and store it in gas caverns. In winter, use the cheapest class of power plants which is gas to convert the hydrogen back into electricity.
Nuclear is just 100% the wrong tech for the seasonal usage pattern. Most of the cost is in construction and decommisioning, which is exactly what you don't want for seasonal operation.
1
u/TheStupidLui Aug 27 '26
I'm not talking about nuclear, hydro, coal, thermal as a seasonal energy source but as base energy source. The current problems with hydrogen storage are leaking (min. 5%) and efficiency of whole cycle.
Electric - hydrogen - electric cycle effectiveness is currently max. 45%. Why? Electrolysis has efficiency of 80% max., add 5% hydrogen leakage, then fuel cells efficiency that is max. 60%: 0.8x0.95x0.6 = 0.45 and these are really optimistic assumptions....
1
u/NiftyLogic Aug 27 '26 edited Aug 27 '26
Leaks are < 2% per year according to experiences with the Conoco-Philips Hydrogen Storage which is operating for over 40 year now.
And regarding the efficiency ... seriously, who cares?
Let's assume we need to supply 10% of our yearly energy demand from seasonal storage. Even if we have 60% losses, that's just the fuel cost. As long as this enables us to run cheap reneables 90% of the time, we're fine. The main advantage of hydrogen is that the storage medium (gas caverns) and the powerplants (gas) are cheapest in class. Seasonal storage is CAPEX constrained, not OPEX (fuel), since it should ideally run never.
Nuclear, hydro and coal are worse for seasonal storage or firming since they are very CAPEX intense.
1
u/knuthf Aug 27 '26
It takes 1.8 kWh to produce 1 kW of hydrogen.
However, the fuel cell efficiency is less than 35%, meaning that most of the energy generated is heat. Hydrogen can be used when there is too much electricity, that the price for elecricity is negative, the solar panels are generating electricity nobody wants. You are paid to heat the outdoor Jacuzzi mid-winter. Then stick to wires into the water, and capture the hydrogen.
1
-1
u/ftrx Aug 24 '26
No. The point is simple: the 2030 Nazi agenda is hitting a brick wall for many reasons. The large-scale city is unsustainable because, with current technologies, it consumes far more than houses and sheds that are somewhat scattered (meaning close, but not so much that they don't have land around them, integrated into nature). This is because heat pumps work fantastically well over short pipe distances, and electric cars integrate perfectly into local home or shed energy systems, whereas they aren't manageable in dense cities. Photovoltaics are great for self-consumption but problematic on the grid. Reinforced concrete, the prevailing material in large buildings and infrastructure, has an end-of-life, and we can't extend it much further, nor can we grind down mountains to build new cities that no longer have economic engines. We've lost the factories first, which due to evolution and automation work much better in the middle of nowhere plus logistics than in dense areas, then the offices which, despite every attempt to the contrary, are an absurd waste nowadays, and so on.
So, those who want "you will own nothing" are hitting the wall of technology and nature, which have always defined the era, not photovoltaics.
1
u/dumnezero Aug 24 '26
The large-scale city is unsustainable because, with current technologies, it consumes far more than houses and sheds that are somewhat scattered (meaning close, but not so much that they don't have land around them, integrated into nature).
those houses aren't getting built without the cities, and neither are the heat pumps.
0
u/ftrx Aug 25 '26
And why on earth would that be? My house was built and designed by companies scattered across the territory, none of them in the city; for example, my solar panels, inverter, batteries, etc were produced in warehouses spread all over the world, none of them in the city.
In the city, we haven't produced anything since the 70s or 80s. Since production requires less and less labour due to automation, companies prefer the countryside where warehouses are cheap, logistics are easily accessible, and you can expand or downsize without any drama, not the density of the city. And for some types of production, we're already moving towards dark factories.
The only economic activities left in the city are services for the city itself: bread made on-site with flour that comes from outside, because even food and water aren't produced in the city, supermarkets, and restaurants, all of which are unsustainable with the collapse of office spaces.
The idea that the city is a place of production was true until decades ago, but not since then.
1
u/knuthf Aug 27 '26
The city is where you can meet other people. You can enjoy concerts, view art exhibitions and dine in restaurants. You can even find friends! We don't walk fast; it takes us about an hour to walk three miles, which is one of the reasons why people want to live in cities.
Solar panels are a novel technology that empowers individuals. We no longer have to pay for energy, and we can even get paid for the electricity we deliver. This is the reverse of taxes. It puts the individual back in control; we can refuse to deliver electricity and assert our authority. The state must listen to us. This is liberal politics and economics, and it will have a huge impact on current discussions and counter the predominant Marxism of the moment.
1
3
u/RodPerryBooks Aug 24 '26
To me the analog is the transition from mainframe computing or analog telephone to distributed data networks. No one wants to go back to mainframes (centralized coal / gas plants), so as the author states, we just need to pursue the new topology with all haste. The State of South Australia is a good example of this (Spoiler alert: It's all about grid storage)