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Some thoughts about recent developments which may change your mind about solar panels being useless in Finland ... Hydrogen production is now possible with ren

by renesd 10y ago

Some thoughts about recent developments which may change your mind about solar panels being useless in Finland ... Hydrogen production is now possible with renewable energy. There are some trains going into service in a few days in Germany that use Hydrogen instead of diesel. I also saw many hydrogen Toyota cars whilst in Japan. The technology is here, and works. The break through in Hydrogen production happened in 2014. Just after which the hydrogen train started being designed. Only Toyota have been able to make the technology work in a cost effective way for smaller vehicles as far as I know. However, it's a simpler thing to do with larger vehicles like buses and trains. Also, directly using the energy for things like Aluminium smelting does not require batteries. This is already happening in Germany. Even if it only works for half the year, the energy savings are massive. Without needing batteries, solar power is hell cheap. When you can convert all the wasted extra power from renewables into Hydrogen, you can use that energy to power much of the transport and heating. This may make it cost effective to install the solar for summer months, but still have all the extra power generation ability for when solar is not producing. This is because now using excess power is now profitable, and it doesn't have to be thrown away. I'll also note that the energy revolution 2 in Germany has produced massive savings in energy use. Apparently every euro of energy saved is worth three-five euros of cheaper energy generation. These energy analytics systems are now starting to be sold world wide. I think there's still 20 years whilst existing infrastructure is being replaced, but we are already at the point alternatives are significantly cheaper. Even if we don't assume technology gets better every day. Even in countries where the government is owned by the coal industry (Australia) coal mines are being closed down to be replaced by cheaper alternatives. Much of the world is without electricity, and they can get electricity for a much smaller investment with renewables, as renewables scale. Coal, nuclear and other older technologies don't scale down to the low end. At the high end they now can't compete on cost (even ignoring health and other pollution costs they don't get charged for in many places).

renesd 10y ago
Editing the comment doesn't work for some reason. s/coal mines/coal plants/g Also I meant to make a point about how renewables have access to a much larger market than fossil fuels. Because big funds are divesting, because countries are banning them. There is a bigger market on the demand side for renewables because of the scaling. The market is also a lot bigger on the supply side because less capital is needed to supply renewable power. Also the big advanced tech countries (Germany, China, Japan) are switching off producing fossil fuel using technology. Which will result in the prices for this type of technology increasing, and more advancements going into renewables.
- doikor 10y ago
  Problem with the "would be cheap for half the year" is that you would still have the capital costs of building the grid for 2x (actually you would need 4x the grid as the energy usage during winter is roughly 2x of the amount in summer in Finland) the use as you want to run your factory during the winter too. Even if solar is cheap I doubt it is that cheap to offset a capital cost like that. Most of central Europe is a quite useless comparison for a place like Finland for energy production. The weather is just very different. ~2 hours of sunlight and -30 weather isn't that rare even in Helsinki (which is quite a bit father south then a good chunk of the country). Pretty much whole of Finland is outside of the "makes sense to build solar here" zone. I don't see that many people building big solar plants in Alaska so why would you in Finland (roughly the same latitude) Australia has mostly been digging coal for export. It is quite natural that they would close mines if the demand internationally (mainly in Asia) goes down.

by renesd 10y ago

renesd 10y ago

Editing the comment doesn't work for some reason. s/coal mines/coal plants/g Also I meant to make a point about how renewables have access to a much larger market than fossil fuels. Because big funds are divesting, because countries are banning them. There is a bigger market on the demand side for renewables because of the scaling. The market is also a lot bigger on the supply side because less capital is needed to supply renewable power. Also the big advanced tech countries (Germany, China, Japan) are switching off producing fossil fuel using technology. Which will result in the prices for this type of technology increasing, and more advancements going into renewables.

doikor 10y ago
Problem with the "would be cheap for half the year" is that you would still have the capital costs of building the grid for 2x (actually you would need 4x the grid as the energy usage during winter is roughly 2x of the amount in summer in Finland) the use as you want to run your factory during the winter too. Even if solar is cheap I doubt it is that cheap to offset a capital cost like that. Most of central Europe is a quite useless comparison for a place like Finland for energy production. The weather is just very different. ~2 hours of sunlight and -30 weather isn't that rare even in Helsinki (which is quite a bit father south then a good chunk of the country). Pretty much whole of Finland is outside of the "makes sense to build solar here" zone. I don't see that many people building big solar plants in Alaska so why would you in Finland (roughly the same latitude) Australia has mostly been digging coal for export. It is quite natural that they would close mines if the demand internationally (mainly in Asia) goes down.