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A dream would be to have onshore and offshore windmills where it makes sense, solar panels on most residential and commercial roofs, panels serving as roofs for

A dream would be to have onshore and offshore windmills where it makes sense, solar panels on most residential and commercial roofs, panels serving as roofs for car parking lots, hydro power generators where water flow needs to be regulated, and to supported such a renewable power generation - connected micro grids with local battery warehouses to serve as a power buffer. Some centralised govt provided services could be run on "excess power" such as pumping water to a overhead storage for a local community, or powering a water purification or sewage cleaning plant to run during periods of excess power. Now, I need to wake up and go get a coffee :-)

roryisok 8y ago
It's a beautiful dream and I hope it happens
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> solar panels on most residential and commercial roofs If one's aim is progressing along the Kardashev scale [1], then the single metric to optimize is the cost, including of externalities, of energy. Rooftop solar seems doesn't seem to scale as efficiently, both in measured and externalized environmental costs (e.g. installer safety and carbon consumption), as utility solar. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
- reacharavindh 8y ago
  Admittedly naive ask. I hear this argument that residential solar panels are not very cost-effective. A former colleague once told me that after Government subsidies, his break-even point for solar investment was 12 years. I didnt ask him at that time. I'm assuming he was referring to energy buyback from his utility provider for his math. Isn't that against their business incentive to support residential solar? If one has a house, and covers the roof with self-purchased solar panels, and hooks them up to a large enough battery-box, wouldn't it just be "I saved the cost I would have paid as my utility provider's bill"? That way the return on investment is more manageable and is without being held at the mercy of the power companies?
  - gm-conspiracy 8y ago
    Also, these calculations seem to assume electricity costs will remain constant, and not increase.
    - francisofascii 8y ago
      Also assumes the cost won't go down. I fear utilities will start jacking up monthly customer charges and keep rates low to avoid paying solar customers for generation.
    - EADGBE 8y ago
      It looks to be plateauing. https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-consumption-since-1975/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-co...
  - pjc50 8y ago
    >Isn't that against their business incentive to support residential solar? Yes, but that may not matter. I have a set of solar panels. They cost about £5k. They produce up to 25kWh/day: https://flatline.org.uk/daystats.html https://flatline.org.uk/daystats.html I'm paid £0.138 for every kWh that is generated, regardless of whether I use it or not, and I don't have net metering. This results in a cheque every few months for about £500 a year, plus the saving of a difficult-to-meter amount of electricity used locally during the day. This gives me a ten year payback (or sooner). Entertainingly because of the way feed-in tariffs work in the UK, they could be paid by a totally different provider to the one billing me for grid electricity.
- jacobush 8y ago
  I think humans can progress on that scale, but I also think we need to do it the human way. That is, the scenic route if you will, the longer way. If we can just nibble our way to full coverage (of roof tops in this case) faster than we put up new roofs, I think we'll be fine. Utility solar will follow eventually. Also, and this also ties in to mankinds irrationality - say there is some kind disaster or bombing campaign. I fully believe roof top, i.e. decentralized power generation must be more robust than utility solar.
- glenstein 8y ago
  >If one's aim is progressing along the Kardashev scale I doubt most folks who put solar panels on their roof are doing it to advance a hundred thousand year grand strategy for galactic scale energy consumption. I think it's mostly stuff like minimizing carbon footprint and saving money over the 20 year lifetime of a project.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > saving money over the 20 year lifetime of a project Practical point being, a future where everyone has rooftop solar is a future where everyone is spending more on energy than the alternate future of utility-scale solar. If we want to save money, the cheapest solution, i.e. utility-scale solar, is the way to go.
    - epistasis 8y ago
      Different entities have different costs. Depending on the installation, maintenance, and component costs of different parts of a system, it may end up making a lot of sense to massively downsize the grid and make most single family homes into islands. Electrical grids are hugely expensive, and even if the raw cost of utility scale solar installs is lower than residential, the delivery is killer.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
      While I understand what you're getting at here, I see little evidence to suggest utility controlled generation will ever be cheaper. People are installing roof-top solar now because they're able to seeing savings in the form of reduced electricity bills now. Practical point being, if you tell people: "don't install roof-top solar now, keep paying outrageous electricity prices (I'm in Australia, see) and hope that one day the electricity retailers pass on the savings when they can buy wholesale solar / wind for next to nothing" you can expect to be laughed at.
      - thinkcontext 8y ago
        Utility scale solar is definitely cheaper. NREL puts residential at $2.80/watt vs $1.03 for utility scale[0]. Its only cheaper for consumers because of subsidies and net metering. [0] https://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2017/nrel-report-utility-scale-solar-pv-system-cost-fell-last-year.html https://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2017/nrel-report-utility-sca... edit: Missed the part where you are in Australia, I was giving numbers for the US. I believe its true the residential numbers are cheaper in Australia due to lower soft costs, its still true that utility scale has a cost advantage because of labor cost savings.
- pjc50 8y ago
  > one's aim Who's the "one" here? I mean, that's simply not how our current civilisation works in terms of "aims" in any collective sense. We're a long way from the central planning comittee erecting a Dyson sphere. Realistically, the objective of various political bodies is to avoid global warming catastrophe in the medium term, while taking into account the irreducible political constraints and limits to planning. Rooftop solar through subsidies is easier, because suddenly you've recruited an army of people to handle the permitting and the process is simpler. Whereas to build utility-scale solar you need to spend a year or more arguing over it before breaking ground.
- kk58 8y ago
  Rooftop solar cannot work in dense multistorey apartments. Its at best a rural suburban solution
  - r00fus 8y ago
    Dense multi-story apartments already are far more efficient than the same density spread over a suburban sprawl. Which is why diversity in the energy portfolio is a good idea.
nickik 8y ago
That is more of a idealistic fantasy world then a reality. Roof solar and smart grid are incredibly expensive. Why not just look at countries who have already solved the problem. France, Switzerland and Sweden all have essentially zero carbon in energy production. They all use water and nuclear energy. For the US, you can just start replacing goal with nuclear, without the massive cost of the fundamental transformation to the whole energy system and grid. Is the goal to create an idealistic distributed energy system or is the goal to effectively reduce carbon?
- jogjayr 8y ago
  Is safe storage of the radioactive waste from nuclear plants a solved problem? Even if the current fears about nuclear are overblown (and I'm not convinced that they are) what do you do about waste that remains dangerous for many human lifetimes?
  - nickik 8y ago
    > Is safe storage of the radioactive waste from nuclear plants a solved problem? Depends on what you mean by 'solved'. Its not solved in the sense that there is a political solution and agreement. It is solved however in so far as that all scientists and technician agree that there is a simply solution and that the money for that has already been accumulated by fees payed on nuclear energy. We are just now again seeing some progress on this front but sadly this topic has been covered in mountains of shit. > Even if the current fears about nuclear are overblown (and I'm not convinced that they are) what do you do about waste that remains dangerous for many human lifetimes? Actually the whole way we talk about this is wrong. Nuclear 'waste' is not waste in any meaningful sense. It actually contains highly valuable materials. The waste majority of the 'waste' we have now is fuel that can be used in reactors (if we ever manage to build new reactors). Other parts of it can be used for nuclear batteries that we use to explore space, other parts can be used for medical isotopes and the list goes on. There are geological places that have no moved for millions of years and will not for millions of years as far as we can tell. In order for it to endanger lives you would have to come up with incredibly complex story. Nobody has ever died from nuclear waste and its very unlikely that anybody ever will. Compared to solar or coal the waste is far smaller. The output of coal plants is ironically more radioactive then a nuclear plant and ash pile is worse then all nuclear waste combined. Solar leaves behind mountains of electronic waste the then go to childeren in Africa that take them apart and get poisoned. Nuclear has the smallest amount of population or waste compared to any all other technologies. It is by far the safest for human in both cases. It is also the saves form of energy production (including all nuclear disasters) in terms of human lives.

roryisok 8y ago

It's a beautiful dream and I hope it happens

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> solar panels on most residential and commercial roofs If one's aim is progressing along the Kardashev scale [1], then the single metric to optimize is the cost, including of externalities, of energy. Rooftop solar seems doesn't seem to scale as efficiently, both in measured and externalized environmental costs (e.g. installer safety and carbon consumption), as utility solar. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

reacharavindh 8y ago
Admittedly naive ask. I hear this argument that residential solar panels are not very cost-effective. A former colleague once told me that after Government subsidies, his break-even point for solar investment was 12 years. I didnt ask him at that time. I'm assuming he was referring to energy buyback from his utility provider for his math. Isn't that against their business incentive to support residential solar? If one has a house, and covers the roof with self-purchased solar panels, and hooks them up to a large enough battery-box, wouldn't it just be "I saved the cost I would have paid as my utility provider's bill"? That way the return on investment is more manageable and is without being held at the mercy of the power companies?
- gm-conspiracy 8y ago
  Also, these calculations seem to assume electricity costs will remain constant, and not increase.
  - francisofascii 8y ago
    Also assumes the cost won't go down. I fear utilities will start jacking up monthly customer charges and keep rates low to avoid paying solar customers for generation.
  - EADGBE 8y ago
    It looks to be plateauing. https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-consumption-since-1975/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-co...
- pjc50 8y ago
  >Isn't that against their business incentive to support residential solar? Yes, but that may not matter. I have a set of solar panels. They cost about £5k. They produce up to 25kWh/day: https://flatline.org.uk/daystats.html https://flatline.org.uk/daystats.html I'm paid £0.138 for every kWh that is generated, regardless of whether I use it or not, and I don't have net metering. This results in a cheque every few months for about £500 a year, plus the saving of a difficult-to-meter amount of electricity used locally during the day. This gives me a ten year payback (or sooner). Entertainingly because of the way feed-in tariffs work in the UK, they could be paid by a totally different provider to the one billing me for grid electricity.
jacobush 8y ago
I think humans can progress on that scale, but I also think we need to do it the human way. That is, the scenic route if you will, the longer way. If we can just nibble our way to full coverage (of roof tops in this case) faster than we put up new roofs, I think we'll be fine. Utility solar will follow eventually. Also, and this also ties in to mankinds irrationality - say there is some kind disaster or bombing campaign. I fully believe roof top, i.e. decentralized power generation must be more robust than utility solar.
glenstein 8y ago
>If one's aim is progressing along the Kardashev scale I doubt most folks who put solar panels on their roof are doing it to advance a hundred thousand year grand strategy for galactic scale energy consumption. I think it's mostly stuff like minimizing carbon footprint and saving money over the 20 year lifetime of a project.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > saving money over the 20 year lifetime of a project Practical point being, a future where everyone has rooftop solar is a future where everyone is spending more on energy than the alternate future of utility-scale solar. If we want to save money, the cheapest solution, i.e. utility-scale solar, is the way to go.
  - epistasis 8y ago
    Different entities have different costs. Depending on the installation, maintenance, and component costs of different parts of a system, it may end up making a lot of sense to massively downsize the grid and make most single family homes into islands. Electrical grids are hugely expensive, and even if the raw cost of utility scale solar installs is lower than residential, the delivery is killer.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    While I understand what you're getting at here, I see little evidence to suggest utility controlled generation will ever be cheaper. People are installing roof-top solar now because they're able to seeing savings in the form of reduced electricity bills now. Practical point being, if you tell people: "don't install roof-top solar now, keep paying outrageous electricity prices (I'm in Australia, see) and hope that one day the electricity retailers pass on the savings when they can buy wholesale solar / wind for next to nothing" you can expect to be laughed at.
    - thinkcontext 8y ago
      Utility scale solar is definitely cheaper. NREL puts residential at $2.80/watt vs $1.03 for utility scale[0]. Its only cheaper for consumers because of subsidies and net metering. [0] https://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2017/nrel-report-utility-scale-solar-pv-system-cost-fell-last-year.html https://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2017/nrel-report-utility-sca... edit: Missed the part where you are in Australia, I was giving numbers for the US. I believe its true the residential numbers are cheaper in Australia due to lower soft costs, its still true that utility scale has a cost advantage because of labor cost savings.
pjc50 8y ago
> one's aim Who's the "one" here? I mean, that's simply not how our current civilisation works in terms of "aims" in any collective sense. We're a long way from the central planning comittee erecting a Dyson sphere. Realistically, the objective of various political bodies is to avoid global warming catastrophe in the medium term, while taking into account the irreducible political constraints and limits to planning. Rooftop solar through subsidies is easier, because suddenly you've recruited an army of people to handle the permitting and the process is simpler. Whereas to build utility-scale solar you need to spend a year or more arguing over it before breaking ground.
kk58 8y ago
Rooftop solar cannot work in dense multistorey apartments. Its at best a rural suburban solution
- r00fus 8y ago
  Dense multi-story apartments already are far more efficient than the same density spread over a suburban sprawl. Which is why diversity in the energy portfolio is a good idea.

nickik 8y ago

That is more of a idealistic fantasy world then a reality. Roof solar and smart grid are incredibly expensive. Why not just look at countries who have already solved the problem. France, Switzerland and Sweden all have essentially zero carbon in energy production. They all use water and nuclear energy. For the US, you can just start replacing goal with nuclear, without the massive cost of the fundamental transformation to the whole energy system and grid. Is the goal to create an idealistic distributed energy system or is the goal to effectively reduce carbon?

jogjayr 8y ago
Is safe storage of the radioactive waste from nuclear plants a solved problem? Even if the current fears about nuclear are overblown (and I'm not convinced that they are) what do you do about waste that remains dangerous for many human lifetimes?
- nickik 8y ago
  > Is safe storage of the radioactive waste from nuclear plants a solved problem? Depends on what you mean by 'solved'. Its not solved in the sense that there is a political solution and agreement. It is solved however in so far as that all scientists and technician agree that there is a simply solution and that the money for that has already been accumulated by fees payed on nuclear energy. We are just now again seeing some progress on this front but sadly this topic has been covered in mountains of shit. > Even if the current fears about nuclear are overblown (and I'm not convinced that they are) what do you do about waste that remains dangerous for many human lifetimes? Actually the whole way we talk about this is wrong. Nuclear 'waste' is not waste in any meaningful sense. It actually contains highly valuable materials. The waste majority of the 'waste' we have now is fuel that can be used in reactors (if we ever manage to build new reactors). Other parts of it can be used for nuclear batteries that we use to explore space, other parts can be used for medical isotopes and the list goes on. There are geological places that have no moved for millions of years and will not for millions of years as far as we can tell. In order for it to endanger lives you would have to come up with incredibly complex story. Nobody has ever died from nuclear waste and its very unlikely that anybody ever will. Compared to solar or coal the waste is far smaller. The output of coal plants is ironically more radioactive then a nuclear plant and ash pile is worse then all nuclear waste combined. Solar leaves behind mountains of electronic waste the then go to childeren in Africa that take them apart and get poisoned. Nuclear has the smallest amount of population or waste compared to any all other technologies. It is by far the safest for human in both cases. It is also the saves form of energy production (including all nuclear disasters) in terms of human lives.