3 ms·

> They're getting better. Solar is getting so much cheaper, at such a fast pace, that I really don't understand how one can disagree that it's the future of ou

by dymk 5y ago

> They're getting better. Solar is getting so much cheaper, at such a fast pace, that I really don't understand how one can disagree that it's the future of our energy grids. Installing solar is a no-brainer in some parts of the world now, and in the very near future (extrapolating from the last 10 years), it'll be every part of the world soon. What problems am I hand waving away? https://www.statista.com/chart/26085/price-per-megawatt-hour-of-electricity-by-source/ https://www.statista.com/chart/26085/price-per-megawatt-hour...

spywaregorilla 5y ago
Solar is, without a doubt, a major part of future energy grids. But this chart is the levelized cost of energy. Its not the price at which you can get it. Energy demands are higher in winter. They are non trivial at night. The cost of energy might be low, but the price at which you can get it may be very high if not enough is available.
- formvoltron 5y ago
  A lot of the "not available at night" argument can be solved with.... owning an EV. I use 6kWh / day. (not sure how! but that's what the power company says) A decent EV battery holds 20 kWh or more. Boom. There is my night time storage buffer.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    to be fair, you need more than the EV. Using your EV battery as a power source to feed into your main house/home wiring is not crazy complicated, but it's not just a plugin.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    Average home uses 30kWh per day. And that's average. Winter is higher, and would be much much higher if we were trying to use electricity to heat homes instead natural gas. Where do you live? CA? You have a lot more sun and land than other areas. Building the generation capacity in your area might not help areas that actually need the power to the north and east. And what if you need your car to have full power? What if you're not a low needs residential unit but a hospital? Or a factory? What if you have a couple low sun days in a row? What if your city just does not have enough power in reserves and its very cold or very hot? Battery tech and solar is great, but its not the perfect solution.
1_player 5y ago
I don't get why you and many other commenters are so against the idea of fusion. Solar is decent, not perfect by any stretch, so we should just give up trying to solve the energy technology for the next 200 years? It's not even like it's one or the other. No one is abandoning solar to work on fusion. But fusion, if it works, is orders of magnitudes more efficient than solar is. It opens avenues that are considered impossible and science fiction today. It's like being back in the 1700s and arguing that research into petrol is a waste of time. I absolutely do not understand this mindset.
- dymk 5y ago
  I'm not against fusion, there just is simply no viable fusion power that can be built today. It's not going to get here fast enough. We need to adopt renewables yesterday. There is no time to be wasted pretending that fusion provides any value aside from starry eyed theoretical aspiration. We will not be here in 200 years to enjoy fusion if we don't adopt solar and battery _right now_.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    > We will not be here in 200 years to enjoy fusion if we don't adopt solar and battery _right now_. Technically, none of us will be here in 200 years. I very much doubt if climate change will lead to an end to the human species, so I think a better way talk about this stuff is to frame it in terms of our descendants living in an impoverished, less beautiful, more strife-filled world. But yes, FFS, action yesterday or last week, and make it trillions of dollars worth of action, like an actual war, but for infinitely better reasons.
- formvoltron 5y ago
  I'm 48. When I was 16 I remember reading a Scientific American article that was describing how nuclear fusion was around the corner. Within the next 2 years!
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    I hear a lot of stuff like this and it just doesn't jive with my childhood experience. I have a suspicion that bullshit was, on some specific channels like pop sci, much easier to pass in the pre-internet days. Or at least the signal : noise ratio has gotten much better with a voice of reason saying "no" whenever these things pop up. It's always been clearly communicated to me that fusion is extremely hard and we're not that close to getting it working.

by dymk 5y ago

spywaregorilla 5y ago

Solar is, without a doubt, a major part of future energy grids. But this chart is the levelized cost of energy. Its not the price at which you can get it. Energy demands are higher in winter. They are non trivial at night. The cost of energy might be low, but the price at which you can get it may be very high if not enough is available.

formvoltron 5y ago
A lot of the "not available at night" argument can be solved with.... owning an EV. I use 6kWh / day. (not sure how! but that's what the power company says) A decent EV battery holds 20 kWh or more. Boom. There is my night time storage buffer.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  to be fair, you need more than the EV. Using your EV battery as a power source to feed into your main house/home wiring is not crazy complicated, but it's not just a plugin.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  Average home uses 30kWh per day. And that's average. Winter is higher, and would be much much higher if we were trying to use electricity to heat homes instead natural gas. Where do you live? CA? You have a lot more sun and land than other areas. Building the generation capacity in your area might not help areas that actually need the power to the north and east. And what if you need your car to have full power? What if you're not a low needs residential unit but a hospital? Or a factory? What if you have a couple low sun days in a row? What if your city just does not have enough power in reserves and its very cold or very hot? Battery tech and solar is great, but its not the perfect solution.

1_player 5y ago

I don't get why you and many other commenters are so against the idea of fusion. Solar is decent, not perfect by any stretch, so we should just give up trying to solve the energy technology for the next 200 years? It's not even like it's one or the other. No one is abandoning solar to work on fusion. But fusion, if it works, is orders of magnitudes more efficient than solar is. It opens avenues that are considered impossible and science fiction today. It's like being back in the 1700s and arguing that research into petrol is a waste of time. I absolutely do not understand this mindset.

dymk 5y ago
I'm not against fusion, there just is simply no viable fusion power that can be built today. It's not going to get here fast enough. We need to adopt renewables yesterday. There is no time to be wasted pretending that fusion provides any value aside from starry eyed theoretical aspiration. We will not be here in 200 years to enjoy fusion if we don't adopt solar and battery _right now_.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > We will not be here in 200 years to enjoy fusion if we don't adopt solar and battery _right now_. Technically, none of us will be here in 200 years. I very much doubt if climate change will lead to an end to the human species, so I think a better way talk about this stuff is to frame it in terms of our descendants living in an impoverished, less beautiful, more strife-filled world. But yes, FFS, action yesterday or last week, and make it trillions of dollars worth of action, like an actual war, but for infinitely better reasons.
formvoltron 5y ago
I'm 48. When I was 16 I remember reading a Scientific American article that was describing how nuclear fusion was around the corner. Within the next 2 years!
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  I hear a lot of stuff like this and it just doesn't jive with my childhood experience. I have a suspicion that bullshit was, on some specific channels like pop sci, much easier to pass in the pre-internet days. Or at least the signal : noise ratio has gotten much better with a voice of reason saying "no" whenever these things pop up. It's always been clearly communicated to me that fusion is extremely hard and we're not that close to getting it working.