3 ms·

Thanks for the comment, I think it massively depends on the specific panels and their makeup. You also add a lot of excellent context to the stories I found. Th

by SEJeff 7y ago

Thanks for the comment, I think it massively depends on the specific panels and their makeup. You also add a lot of excellent context to the stories I found. There is a ton of cutting edge research going into solar panels and there are many different ways to achieve higher efficiency and/or longer lifespans. My comment wasn't intended to say solar/wind is killing Coal because it isn't. Natural Gas is what is killing coal. I'm from Kentucky originally and the economy is feeling the squeeze from coal just not being really economically viable for some use cases compared to natgas. As the tech improves and mass production makes it cheaper, solar / wind will continue to make more economic sense. The currently "top of the line" most efficient solar panels as of 2019 come from SunPower and only are a paltry 22.2% efficient so there is a lot of room for improvement. Regarding renewables being a fraction of their "nameplate" capacity it really just depends on too many factors to generalize.

southern_cross 7y ago
Well, "nameplate" capacity is always the maximum theoretical output under ideal conditions, and how often does that happen? And with solar you have to deal with nighttime, so there goes fully half of it right off the bat! As to that local installation, I drove by it the other day and saw no obvious tracking issues or anything like that. When I took a tour of it about a year after it opened, they said that it had already become obvious that the inverter system was going to be finicky and that it was going to an ongoing challenge to keep that in tip-top shape, given the expense involved. So after five years I could easily envision a situation where the panels and tracking system are still going strong, but the inverter system has degraded to the point where it can only spit out 60% max.

3 ms·

Thanks for the comment, I think it massively depends on the specific panels and their makeup. You also add a lot of excellent context to the stories I found. Th

by SEJeff 7y ago

southern_cross 7y ago
Well, "nameplate" capacity is always the maximum theoretical output under ideal conditions, and how often does that happen? And with solar you have to deal with nighttime, so there goes fully half of it right off the bat! As to that local installation, I drove by it the other day and saw no obvious tracking issues or anything like that. When I took a tour of it about a year after it opened, they said that it had already become obvious that the inverter system was going to be finicky and that it was going to an ongoing challenge to keep that in tip-top shape, given the expense involved. So after five years I could easily envision a situation where the panels and tracking system are still going strong, but the inverter system has degraded to the point where it can only spit out 60% max.