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As wind/solar scales, it's likely to get more regulation. There will be fires in battery facilities. People in San Bernardino county will put a moratorium on la
by acidburnNSA 7y ago
As wind/solar scales, it's likely to get more regulation. There will be fires in battery facilities. People in San Bernardino county will put a moratorium on large solar installations in the desert due to dust storms, etc. This kind of thing always happens, and with wind/solar it will be because they take up so much land and raw materials. Nuclear was once a wonder energy source (in 1958), but as it scaled it ran into troubles. There is some probability that this will happen to wind/solar too. This will slow them down (due to permitting) and increase costs. Intermittency is their boogeyman. When you have enough solar to power everything at noon in the summer, each additional panel becomes a little more expensive than the last.
EROI is just energy system output/manufacturing energy in. How is that a function of price?
- Retric 7y agoSolar’s energy density is surprisingly high. To average 1GW of solar at 30% capacity factor = 3.4GW @ 220w/m^2 = 0.076% of San Bernardino county. Put all of the states electricity generation as solar in that one county and your at ~2% land area. Even that’s not going to have any effect on dust storms. EROI is a function of price in that you need to pay for more than just energy when building something, interest payments for example. If your infrastructure costs X$ to build it must use far less than X$ worth of energy. And, if you’re building the cheapest energy source possible it must therefore have a high EROI.
- acidburnNSA 7y agohttps://www.sbsun.com/2019/02/28/san-bernardino-county-board-to-prohibit-renewable-energy-development-in-key-desert-areas/ https://www.sbsun.com/2019/02/28/san-bernardino-county-board... > And, if you’re building the cheapest energy source possible it must therefore have a high EROI. That's only true to the degree that the energy cost of building an energy system is directly proportional to the dollar cost, which is often very not true.
- Retric 7y agoIt’s got nothing to do with dust storms: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-san-bernardino-solar-renewable-energy-20190228-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-san-bernardino-solar-... This is simply pure NIMBI issue which also hits nuclear power. “That's only true to the degree that the energy cost of building an energy system is directly proportional to the dollar cost, which is often very not true.” This is an economic argument if X$ buys you K energy from the cheapest energy source it buys some number less than K from more expensive energy sources. Thus the least expensive energy source must have positive EROI. As solar is capital intensive interest payments representing zero energy are a significant cost, which pushes up the minimum possible EROI.
- acidburnNSA 7y ago> It’s got nothing to do with dust storms From your link: "They came from high desert communities such as Daggett, Joshua Tree and Lucerne Valley, where existing solar projects are seen by many as eyesores that destroy desert ecosystems and fuel larger dust storms."
- Retric 7y agoYes, note the “seen by many“ which is used because there is zero truth in the statement.
- acidburnNSA 7y agoYou're saying there are no dust storms. I'm saying the people whining about things like dust storms put in place a ban. We could easily both be 100% right.
- Retric 7y agoAhh, ok my mistake.