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This will create massive pressure on the price of oil. Why would anyone in their right mind not try to sell it off as fast as possible as it won't be worth muc

This will create massive pressure on the price of oil. Why would anyone in their right mind not try to sell it off as fast as possible as it won't be worth much in a few years.

Annatar 10y ago
Because right now, batteries last only about one year and need to be replaced after that (I have lots of bad experience there), and because right now, my calculations show that for a 35,000 investement, the panels have to last 13 years before one breaks even, unless one lives in a sunny area. The problem is that the current solar technology isn't very good yet: the panels constantly lose capacity as they generate electricity. And integrated Stirling engine designs are only available for industrial applications, or made by enthusiasts: one still cannnot go to local Lowe's or Home Depot and buy a residential, integrated Stirling engine power plant. That's why oil is going to stay with us for a few more decades. Hopefully not too many, but it's not going to disappear overnight.
- parimm 10y ago
  Mordern batteries last a lot more than one year. Tesla is providing ten year warranties on their batteries for their daily cycle batteries. https://www.tesla.com/powerwall https://www.tesla.com/powerwall
  - Annatar 10y ago
    They do? I guess that explains why my UPS's, running on the same type of batteries, would be regularly shot after a year and I'd have a power outage. And I have industrial uninterruptible power supplies, with the current going through them, just like how they would be used in a solar panel scenario. Don't believe the hype. Modern batteries are junk.
- jerven 10y ago
  Not on an industrial scale. Currently, solar and battery is roughly similar too diesel generated electricity in cost (i.e. very expensive) but for load displacement solar is very hard to beat. In this case the Abu Dhabi grid is basically running on gas plants that would be peakers in other markets. i.e. Abu Dhabi could consume much more solar especially as a large demand for power is for cooling (storing cold water, freezing some food further is a much cheaper way of storing power than batteries as it is load shifting.) Basically oil is out of mind for generating electrical power on an industrial scale as its way to expensive so it is not competing with that. See every small island powergrid investment over the last 5 years. Comparing stirling engines to panels -> Panels are so much simpler they will perform better for any domestic and even industrial use. Maintenance is a driving cost in getting these prices down, mechanicals tend to have much higher maintenance requirements. 20% worst case degradation over 20 years is an minor issue. Easily planed for in the financials of such a plant.
  - Annatar 10y ago
    Comparing stirling engines to panels -> Panels are so much simpler they will perform better for any domestic and even industrial use. Maintenance is a driving cost in getting these prices down, mechanicals tend to have much higher maintenance requirements. What exactly needs maintenance in a Stirling engine? Please be concrete.
    - jerven 10y ago
      Any of the moving parts e.g. mechanical to electrical converter, the 2 axis point solar tracker.
      - Annatar 10y ago
        And you believe that a solar panel would last longer and be cheaper than a Stirling solar power plant? Based on which data?
        pjc50 10y ago
        One of these is currently commercially widely available, installed on roofs, and halving in cost seemingly every 18-24 months. The other one isn't. I don't doubt that Stirling systems could be cheaper, but I'm not seeing them yet. I also flatly refuse to believe that a moving-parts system can last 25 years without maintenance, even if just regular oiling, while solar panels should still have 70-80% of their output after 25 years with no maintenance. It's the inverters and batteries that require maintenance or replacement. (There are claims that solar thermal storage + Stirling is cheaper than PV+batteries, which are much more plausible, but where are the installations, big or small?)
        Annatar 10y ago
        I have yet to see a Stirling engine implementation which requires lubrication, so again, which maintenance are you referring to? Specifically, I was and am referring to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EahfGfDdgNY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EahfGfDdgNY
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Panels have a 25 year warranty, and only degrade about 0.8%/year. They'll produce usable power for at least half a century.
- visarga 10y ago
  > That's why oil is going to stay with us for a few more decades. In a couple of decades we might also have fusion power, and this time it's probably going to work because we have much better superconductor magnets. We can make the whole reactor much smaller.
CptJamesCook 10y ago
Solar doesn't really compete with oil. It competes with coal, natural gas, and nuclear power to power homes.
- frgewut 10y ago
  I would say it does. According to [1] 5% of electricity is generated from oil. Also I would guess that this capacity is mostly located in places where other generation types are not available (islands, remote locations etc) and will be overtaken by solar before coal. Then also there is EV+solar combo (solar owners are more inclined to get ev and vice versa). [1] http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Generation-by-Energy-Source#tspQvChart http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Gene...
- ghshephard 10y ago
  What happens when transportation starts to shift over to electricity?
- visarga 10y ago
  Why can't solar be used to capture CO2 and produce fuel?
  - mseebach 10y ago
    It not so much that it isn't possible, just that it's significantly more efficient, by a large margin, to use solar to displace more dirty energy sources (and of those, coal is by far the highest priority).
  - ajuc 10y ago
    If you want to create fuel from sun and CO2 it's cheaper to farm some oil-heavy plants and produce biofuel from them. They grow solar cells from sun and air by itself :) It's magic-level nanotech :) http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/prices.html http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/prices.html
  - pjc50 10y ago
    https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/01/uic-solar-co2-fuel/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/01/uic-solar-co2-fuel/ Last time I saw a electricity to fuel system with a price attached, it was the US Navy's one which could produce gasoline at $6/USgal. Not competitive unless you're in the middle of the sea, which is their intended use case.
ekianjo 10y ago
You can easily store oil. Electricity, not so much. And oil is a necessary element for numerous chemical compounds, you cant really compare both.
- XorNot 10y ago
  Industrial use of oil for chemicals doesn't burn it and is tiny compared to transportation. Also highly substitutable with plant sources.
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    > Also highly substitutable with plant sources. This comes up often, but not really. There is no good replacement as cheap as oil from plant sources. Plants require a LOT more labor, processing, and producing it requires huge amounts of space. That's why we use oil and nothing else. If it was competitive, oil would have been replaced by plants long ago for chemical use.

This will create massive pressure on the price of oil. Why would anyone in their right mind not try to sell it off as fast as possible as it won't be worth much in a few years.

Annatar 10y ago

Because right now, batteries last only about one year and need to be replaced after that (I have lots of bad experience there), and because right now, my calculations show that for a 35,000 investement, the panels have to last 13 years before one breaks even, unless one lives in a sunny area. The problem is that the current solar technology isn't very good yet: the panels constantly lose capacity as they generate electricity. And integrated Stirling engine designs are only available for industrial applications, or made by enthusiasts: one still cannnot go to local Lowe's or Home Depot and buy a residential, integrated Stirling engine power plant. That's why oil is going to stay with us for a few more decades. Hopefully not too many, but it's not going to disappear overnight.

parimm 10y ago
Mordern batteries last a lot more than one year. Tesla is providing ten year warranties on their batteries for their daily cycle batteries. https://www.tesla.com/powerwall https://www.tesla.com/powerwall
- Annatar 10y ago
  They do? I guess that explains why my UPS's, running on the same type of batteries, would be regularly shot after a year and I'd have a power outage. And I have industrial uninterruptible power supplies, with the current going through them, just like how they would be used in a solar panel scenario. Don't believe the hype. Modern batteries are junk.
jerven 10y ago
Not on an industrial scale. Currently, solar and battery is roughly similar too diesel generated electricity in cost (i.e. very expensive) but for load displacement solar is very hard to beat. In this case the Abu Dhabi grid is basically running on gas plants that would be peakers in other markets. i.e. Abu Dhabi could consume much more solar especially as a large demand for power is for cooling (storing cold water, freezing some food further is a much cheaper way of storing power than batteries as it is load shifting.) Basically oil is out of mind for generating electrical power on an industrial scale as its way to expensive so it is not competing with that. See every small island powergrid investment over the last 5 years. Comparing stirling engines to panels -> Panels are so much simpler they will perform better for any domestic and even industrial use. Maintenance is a driving cost in getting these prices down, mechanicals tend to have much higher maintenance requirements. 20% worst case degradation over 20 years is an minor issue. Easily planed for in the financials of such a plant.
- Annatar 10y ago
  Comparing stirling engines to panels -> Panels are so much simpler they will perform better for any domestic and even industrial use. Maintenance is a driving cost in getting these prices down, mechanicals tend to have much higher maintenance requirements. What exactly needs maintenance in a Stirling engine? Please be concrete.
  - jerven 10y ago
    Any of the moving parts e.g. mechanical to electrical converter, the 2 axis point solar tracker.
    - Annatar 10y ago
      And you believe that a solar panel would last longer and be cheaper than a Stirling solar power plant? Based on which data?
      - pjc50 10y ago
        One of these is currently commercially widely available, installed on roofs, and halving in cost seemingly every 18-24 months. The other one isn't. I don't doubt that Stirling systems could be cheaper, but I'm not seeing them yet. I also flatly refuse to believe that a moving-parts system can last 25 years without maintenance, even if just regular oiling, while solar panels should still have 70-80% of their output after 25 years with no maintenance. It's the inverters and batteries that require maintenance or replacement. (There are claims that solar thermal storage + Stirling is cheaper than PV+batteries, which are much more plausible, but where are the installations, big or small?)
        Annatar 10y ago
        I have yet to see a Stirling engine implementation which requires lubrication, so again, which maintenance are you referring to? Specifically, I was and am referring to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EahfGfDdgNY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EahfGfDdgNY
toomuchtodo 10y ago
Panels have a 25 year warranty, and only degrade about 0.8%/year. They'll produce usable power for at least half a century.
visarga 10y ago
> That's why oil is going to stay with us for a few more decades. In a couple of decades we might also have fusion power, and this time it's probably going to work because we have much better superconductor magnets. We can make the whole reactor much smaller.

CptJamesCook 10y ago

Solar doesn't really compete with oil. It competes with coal, natural gas, and nuclear power to power homes.

frgewut 10y ago
I would say it does. According to [1] 5% of electricity is generated from oil. Also I would guess that this capacity is mostly located in places where other generation types are not available (islands, remote locations etc) and will be overtaken by solar before coal. Then also there is EV+solar combo (solar owners are more inclined to get ev and vice versa). [1] http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Generation-by-Energy-Source#tspQvChart http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Gene...
ghshephard 10y ago
What happens when transportation starts to shift over to electricity?
visarga 10y ago
Why can't solar be used to capture CO2 and produce fuel?
- mseebach 10y ago
  It not so much that it isn't possible, just that it's significantly more efficient, by a large margin, to use solar to displace more dirty energy sources (and of those, coal is by far the highest priority).
- ajuc 10y ago
  If you want to create fuel from sun and CO2 it's cheaper to farm some oil-heavy plants and produce biofuel from them. They grow solar cells from sun and air by itself :) It's magic-level nanotech :) http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/prices.html http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/prices.html
- pjc50 10y ago
  https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/01/uic-solar-co2-fuel/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/01/uic-solar-co2-fuel/ Last time I saw a electricity to fuel system with a price attached, it was the US Navy's one which could produce gasoline at $6/USgal. Not competitive unless you're in the middle of the sea, which is their intended use case.

ekianjo 10y ago

You can easily store oil. Electricity, not so much. And oil is a necessary element for numerous chemical compounds, you cant really compare both.

XorNot 10y ago
Industrial use of oil for chemicals doesn't burn it and is tiny compared to transportation. Also highly substitutable with plant sources.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  > Also highly substitutable with plant sources. This comes up often, but not really. There is no good replacement as cheap as oil from plant sources. Plants require a LOT more labor, processing, and producing it requires huge amounts of space. That's why we use oil and nothing else. If it was competitive, oil would have been replaced by plants long ago for chemical use.