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Am I correct to assume that wind is a more indirect source of power than solar? In my mind, solar energy creates wind by heating up the surface of the earth, w

Am I correct to assume that wind is a more indirect source of power than solar? In my mind, solar energy creates wind by heating up the surface of the earth, which then heats up the air above it, which then moves around to even out the temperature differences. Therefore I suspect that in the long run (10 years? 100 years?) solar energy will be more common than wind energy. Similar to how solid state drives are overtaking spinning drives. What do you guys think?

pxeboot 5y ago
Both seem useful in different places. There are very windy locations that get very little sun, and very sunny locations that get very little wind.
- teebs 5y ago
  Right - I think generally having a variety of energy sources is also good so that we can have a smoother power generation curve during the day rather than the big peaks that wind & solar generate. Eventually, we'll (hopefully) have enough battery or other energy storage capacity to smooth out bumps in energy production so it can be used throughout the day. But even then it'll be useful to have wind power generating some power when, say, it's nighttime.
caf 5y ago
Yes, but the advantage wind has is that the solar energy gets stored for a while in the surface and atmosphere before you harvest it.
dataflow 5y ago
Wind doesn't shut down at night (though it might be lower).
- stephen_g 5y ago
  Depends where you are. In my state in Australia the wind tends to be more negatively correlated with daylight (i.e. it's more likely to be more windy overnight) but down south it tends to be a bit more the other way. Then there's offshore, where there's a higher likelihood to be more consistently windy just generally.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
DoreenMichele 5y ago
They are complementary. You tend to have more wind when there's no sun, like during storms and some places are very windy at night. The problem with wind is dealing with the huge uptick in energy coming down the pipeline during a major wind event. Last I checked, this was still not a solved problem but I haven't been keeping current like I used to. So in practice they shut down some windmills during major wind events to protect the system. The other issue both wind and solar have is storage. Though we've seen substantial gains in battery storage in recent years, so there is good news but I don't know if we are really "there" yet.
- Miner49er 5y ago
  The turbines automatically shut off to protect themselves, not the system, from my understanding. They have a max amount of power they can generate per turbine anyway, and I would imagine that's designed around. https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/how-do-wind-turbines-survive-severe-storms https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/how-do-wind-turbines-su...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
jillesvangurp 5y ago
Solar is indeed long term cheaper to install but subject to periodic down-time. Wind blows at night and when it is cloudy. Also the nature of our atmosphere is that there is always some wind somewhere. So, they are complementary. Right now everybody is focused on getting to 100% carbon neutral. However, the question must be asked: why stop there and not go to something like 500 or even 1000% energy generation. There will be plenty of things we can do with the excess energy. I think this will play out over the next few decades. Mass produced solar will go on any available surface just because we can. There are already some lower efficiency but potentially very cheap to produce solar systems based on e.g. organic materials that can be printed on flexible surfaces (i.e. not glass). Having that stuff put all over the place is going to make an impact. Solar is already regularly creating surpluses regularly. It's a huge problem for energy providers because they have to shut down more expensive to manage production when that happens. Any time you see a wind mill not spinning, don't assume it is because it is broken and instead consider that there might be too much wind power temporarily. A structural surplus will create supply of very cheap (often negatively priced even) energy. There are all sorts of valuable things we can do with that.
- mdale 5y ago
  Like more hashing :)
- ishtanbul 5y ago
  Carbon neutrality and excess energy are not a measurement of the same thing. Nevertheless, the energy supply demand balance doesn’t work the way you describe. Most power plants are contracted with a specific energy buyer such as distribution utility or an industrial buyer that is meeting a specific load need or as part of their resource planning. So there is rarely more excess capacity beyond a reserve margin. These plants are very capital intensive and investors demand a minimum rate of return so if you don’t know who will buy the power and at what price for many years, the plant will not be funded or built. Source: i work in the power financing industry
  - jillesvangurp 5y ago
    That's only how it works now. It's an obsolete way to operate our energy markets. Carbon neutrality will require electrifying large markets that currently aren't electrified. That overall market is much larger than the current electricity market. By the time even a small portion of that market has been addressed, most electricity generation will long be renewable. That's happening a lot faster than some people seem to think/hope for. Existing gas/coal plant generation will be a tiny portion of that market. And there won't be a whole lot of new capacity going forward. Arguably, new gas plants are already a very dubious investment. Most new capacity will either be new players (e.g. Tesla is planning to be a virtual power provider) in the market without a sunk investment legacy or existing players that compete on divesting/isolating their sunk investments the fastest. Either way, this pushes a lot more renewable energy in the market. That in turn accelerates the demise of more expensive things in the market. Including plants that are still under construction which were financed under the assumption that they would operate for a few decades at high price points for energy. I don't think that industry can afford a major drop in cost for renewables. Yet that seems exactly what might be happening. https://www.rethinkx.com/implications https://www.rethinkx.com/implications Rethinkx published an interesting perspective on this recently. They point out that the financial incentives of new technology are making this happen much faster than many incumbent players have planned/hoped for. They are calling out a feasible date of decarbonizing 90% by 2035 using existing technology depending on how governments incentivize and stimulate scaling and deploying that. It's a very aggressive and provocative timeline. But the reasoning behind it has some merit. We can haggle about how far they are off but I doubt it will be measured in decades.
nl 5y ago
> Therefore I suspect that in the long run (10 years? 100 years?) solar energy will be more common than wind energy. This doesn't follow at all. Even if solar was 100% efficient there would still be many cases where wind power would be preferred. Overcast days, night, and very high latitudes where seasonal effects means there are months where solar isn't very useful are just a few cases.
Reason077 5y ago
Most of our energy sources (except nuclear and geothermal) are forms of solar. Wind, hydro, and fossil fuels are all just stored solar energy! The fact that they’re stored energy is what makes them particularly useful, though. If we were exclusively using solar directly then we’d need to store it ourselves, or build a global distribution grid to move energy from where it’s sunny to where it’s needed.
- blibble 5y ago
  tidal too :) (extracting kinetic energy from the orbiting moon)
- mnd999 5y ago
  Taking that energy out of weather systems seems like a good idea too, given the extreme weather we’ve been seeing over the last few years. Perhaps it’s too small amount of energy to make a difference though.
- Someone 5y ago
  If you go back far enough in time, everything is stored solar energy, but at even larger time frames than fossil fuels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Formation: “Although coal is known from most geologic periods, 90% of all coal beds were deposited in the Carboniferous and Permian periods” That was 300 million years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium#Origin: “uranium is only naturally formed by the r-process (rapid neutron capture) in supernovae and neutron star mergers” That happened 6,5 billion years ago. Geothermal is about 50% radio-active decay and 50% left-overs from when earth was formed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget: “Earth's internal heat budget […] comes from two main sources in roughly equal amounts: the radiogenic heat produced by the radioactive decay of isotopes in the mantle and crust, and the primordial heat left over from the formation of Earth.”
ishtanbul 5y ago
I think solar energy will ultimately be cheaper than wind energy and that will make it the leader in total installed capacity. But both resources are freely available so the fact that sun produces wind isn’t relevant to this question.
LeegleechN 5y ago
Wind acts like a battery (or capacitor) that smooths out fluctuations in solar energy. Radiant solar being more "direct" really has nothing to do with which is the better option.
hannob 5y ago
You're technically right that wind is an indirect form of solar energy. You're not right that this would imply that solar is any "better". The wind will blow whether you use its energy or not. You're not "more efficient" if you use solar instead of wind. You're just making use of energy at another place in the system where it would otherwise go unused. More generally on the Wind/Solar question: They complement each other quite well. Most of the time when there's a lot of sun there isn't a lot of wind and vice versa. Therefore building up both reduces your needs for flexibility and storage compared to only using one. Also of course there's a bit of location dependance, there are places where wind works better and places where solar works better (sunny). But still in almost all places you can use both, but you probably want a different mixture depending on the location.
ww520 5y ago
For wind you're harvesting the solar energy baked over a vast area while on solar panels you're only harvesting the solar energy directly reaching the small surface area of the panel.

pxeboot 5y ago

Both seem useful in different places. There are very windy locations that get very little sun, and very sunny locations that get very little wind.

teebs 5y ago
Right - I think generally having a variety of energy sources is also good so that we can have a smoother power generation curve during the day rather than the big peaks that wind & solar generate. Eventually, we'll (hopefully) have enough battery or other energy storage capacity to smooth out bumps in energy production so it can be used throughout the day. But even then it'll be useful to have wind power generating some power when, say, it's nighttime.

caf 5y ago

Yes, but the advantage wind has is that the solar energy gets stored for a while in the surface and atmosphere before you harvest it.

dataflow 5y ago

Wind doesn't shut down at night (though it might be lower).

stephen_g 5y ago
Depends where you are. In my state in Australia the wind tends to be more negatively correlated with daylight (i.e. it's more likely to be more windy overnight) but down south it tends to be a bit more the other way. Then there's offshore, where there's a higher likelihood to be more consistently windy just generally.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

DoreenMichele 5y ago

They are complementary. You tend to have more wind when there's no sun, like during storms and some places are very windy at night. The problem with wind is dealing with the huge uptick in energy coming down the pipeline during a major wind event. Last I checked, this was still not a solved problem but I haven't been keeping current like I used to. So in practice they shut down some windmills during major wind events to protect the system. The other issue both wind and solar have is storage. Though we've seen substantial gains in battery storage in recent years, so there is good news but I don't know if we are really "there" yet.

Miner49er 5y ago
The turbines automatically shut off to protect themselves, not the system, from my understanding. They have a max amount of power they can generate per turbine anyway, and I would imagine that's designed around. https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/how-do-wind-turbines-survive-severe-storms https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/how-do-wind-turbines-su...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

jillesvangurp 5y ago

Solar is indeed long term cheaper to install but subject to periodic down-time. Wind blows at night and when it is cloudy. Also the nature of our atmosphere is that there is always some wind somewhere. So, they are complementary. Right now everybody is focused on getting to 100% carbon neutral. However, the question must be asked: why stop there and not go to something like 500 or even 1000% energy generation. There will be plenty of things we can do with the excess energy. I think this will play out over the next few decades. Mass produced solar will go on any available surface just because we can. There are already some lower efficiency but potentially very cheap to produce solar systems based on e.g. organic materials that can be printed on flexible surfaces (i.e. not glass). Having that stuff put all over the place is going to make an impact. Solar is already regularly creating surpluses regularly. It's a huge problem for energy providers because they have to shut down more expensive to manage production when that happens. Any time you see a wind mill not spinning, don't assume it is because it is broken and instead consider that there might be too much wind power temporarily. A structural surplus will create supply of very cheap (often negatively priced even) energy. There are all sorts of valuable things we can do with that.

mdale 5y ago
Like more hashing :)
ishtanbul 5y ago
Carbon neutrality and excess energy are not a measurement of the same thing. Nevertheless, the energy supply demand balance doesn’t work the way you describe. Most power plants are contracted with a specific energy buyer such as distribution utility or an industrial buyer that is meeting a specific load need or as part of their resource planning. So there is rarely more excess capacity beyond a reserve margin. These plants are very capital intensive and investors demand a minimum rate of return so if you don’t know who will buy the power and at what price for many years, the plant will not be funded or built. Source: i work in the power financing industry
- jillesvangurp 5y ago
  That's only how it works now. It's an obsolete way to operate our energy markets. Carbon neutrality will require electrifying large markets that currently aren't electrified. That overall market is much larger than the current electricity market. By the time even a small portion of that market has been addressed, most electricity generation will long be renewable. That's happening a lot faster than some people seem to think/hope for. Existing gas/coal plant generation will be a tiny portion of that market. And there won't be a whole lot of new capacity going forward. Arguably, new gas plants are already a very dubious investment. Most new capacity will either be new players (e.g. Tesla is planning to be a virtual power provider) in the market without a sunk investment legacy or existing players that compete on divesting/isolating their sunk investments the fastest. Either way, this pushes a lot more renewable energy in the market. That in turn accelerates the demise of more expensive things in the market. Including plants that are still under construction which were financed under the assumption that they would operate for a few decades at high price points for energy. I don't think that industry can afford a major drop in cost for renewables. Yet that seems exactly what might be happening. https://www.rethinkx.com/implications https://www.rethinkx.com/implications Rethinkx published an interesting perspective on this recently. They point out that the financial incentives of new technology are making this happen much faster than many incumbent players have planned/hoped for. They are calling out a feasible date of decarbonizing 90% by 2035 using existing technology depending on how governments incentivize and stimulate scaling and deploying that. It's a very aggressive and provocative timeline. But the reasoning behind it has some merit. We can haggle about how far they are off but I doubt it will be measured in decades.

nl 5y ago

> Therefore I suspect that in the long run (10 years? 100 years?) solar energy will be more common than wind energy. This doesn't follow at all. Even if solar was 100% efficient there would still be many cases where wind power would be preferred. Overcast days, night, and very high latitudes where seasonal effects means there are months where solar isn't very useful are just a few cases.

Reason077 5y ago

Most of our energy sources (except nuclear and geothermal) are forms of solar. Wind, hydro, and fossil fuels are all just stored solar energy! The fact that they’re stored energy is what makes them particularly useful, though. If we were exclusively using solar directly then we’d need to store it ourselves, or build a global distribution grid to move energy from where it’s sunny to where it’s needed.

blibble 5y ago
tidal too :) (extracting kinetic energy from the orbiting moon)
mnd999 5y ago
Taking that energy out of weather systems seems like a good idea too, given the extreme weather we’ve been seeing over the last few years. Perhaps it’s too small amount of energy to make a difference though.
Someone 5y ago
If you go back far enough in time, everything is stored solar energy, but at even larger time frames than fossil fuels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Formation: “Although coal is known from most geologic periods, 90% of all coal beds were deposited in the Carboniferous and Permian periods” That was 300 million years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium#Origin: “uranium is only naturally formed by the r-process (rapid neutron capture) in supernovae and neutron star mergers” That happened 6,5 billion years ago. Geothermal is about 50% radio-active decay and 50% left-overs from when earth was formed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget: “Earth's internal heat budget […] comes from two main sources in roughly equal amounts: the radiogenic heat produced by the radioactive decay of isotopes in the mantle and crust, and the primordial heat left over from the formation of Earth.”

ishtanbul 5y ago

I think solar energy will ultimately be cheaper than wind energy and that will make it the leader in total installed capacity. But both resources are freely available so the fact that sun produces wind isn’t relevant to this question.

LeegleechN 5y ago

Wind acts like a battery (or capacitor) that smooths out fluctuations in solar energy. Radiant solar being more "direct" really has nothing to do with which is the better option.

hannob 5y ago

You're technically right that wind is an indirect form of solar energy. You're not right that this would imply that solar is any "better". The wind will blow whether you use its energy or not. You're not "more efficient" if you use solar instead of wind. You're just making use of energy at another place in the system where it would otherwise go unused. More generally on the Wind/Solar question: They complement each other quite well. Most of the time when there's a lot of sun there isn't a lot of wind and vice versa. Therefore building up both reduces your needs for flexibility and storage compared to only using one. Also of course there's a bit of location dependance, there are places where wind works better and places where solar works better (sunny). But still in almost all places you can use both, but you probably want a different mixture depending on the location.

ww520 5y ago

For wind you're harvesting the solar energy baked over a vast area while on solar panels you're only harvesting the solar energy directly reaching the small surface area of the panel.