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> Please, show me an estimate for an alternative fossil-fuel system that can guarantee that shortfall. I like nuclear. I have always liked nuclear. However: it

> Please, show me an estimate for an alternative fossil-fuel system that can guarantee that shortfall. I like nuclear. I have always liked nuclear. However: it's always sunny somewhere on Earth, and the total amount of solar energy delivered to us by nature's finest fusion reactor is something like 170TW. If you will indulge me the geopolitical fantasy of putting a suitable planetary-scale transmission system in place, is there any particular reason we couldn't switch to all-solar?

edf13 5y ago
Reason why is as you state: >geopolitical fantasy of putting a suitable planetary-scale transmission system in place That combined with geo-politics, war, big oil etc.
- DanielVZ 5y ago
  Yet we do manage to wire the internet accross oceans and continents.
  - r9 5y ago
    The infrastructure scale is not even in the same ballpark, or even neighbourhood. Besides the fact that you can't just "make" internet from a coal/petrol/etc generator somewhere nearby. Imagine a ship's anchor damaging a cable carrying a couple megawatts of power (this happens frequently to the undersea fibre optic cables, and even those are a nightmare to repair).
  - edf13 5y ago
    Internet connection doesn't suffer as much power loss over larger distances
  - Balero 5y ago
    The internet does not go from A -> B it is a web. You can (and some countries do) cut yourself out of it. But you cannot cut others out of it. Solar generation of power across countries will pretty much go one way. The most obvious and likely one is from North Africa to Europe. If the North African states decide to turn off the power to Europe they can. This is why geo-politically you cannot rely on this as a 100% solution. It can add to a solution, but it is not a good idea to let another country hang a sword over your head like that. (Or more precisely to hang the sword there yourself)
a9h74j 5y ago
> any particular reason Indulging such imagination, which is valuable, one particular reason, as you probably realize, could be resource limits when it comes to actually scaling up solar generation and transmission facilities. Plus, electrification of transportation, if beyond electrified rail, still calls for storage. Here's an analysis of material inputs, focussing on vehicle electrification: https://www.minersoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/3ICM-Michaux.pdf https://www.minersoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/3ICM-Mic...
rich_sasha 5y ago
Europe has its winter all at the same time. Everyone's making their morning tea and heating their houses at the same time. We could, maybe, import all that energy from solar farms in North Africa, but (a) that requires a willing counterparty, and (b) is that actually technically feasible? As in, sign here and pay, we build it for you.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "(b) is that actually technically feasible" It is, see the Desertec initiative. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec It would be just a huge investment, which is why it did not get very far, so far. Also there is indeed the political factor. North africa is not so stable, but of course willing for investment. But even with solar in southern europe alone, you would get quite far, combined with wind and hydro. And if you have excess in summer, you could store that in various ways for the winter. In other words, I believe we do need huge investments into the grid now, connecting europes south and north. And then companys can build more of all kinds of solar and wind farms.
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    Correct me if I’m wrong, b it we can maybe, just about, for a lot of money, store electricity for a couple of hours. Maybe days with hydro. Multiple months seems like an impossibility. The link you provided seems to just mention plans and studies, not building subsea electricity cables. Also says > The project failed twice due to the problem of transportation and cost-inefficiency.
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      Like I said, it would be a huge investment. But without huge investments, we will not get rid of the dependency of oil or dictators either way. The question is what kind of investment. And the studies of desertec implied that it is technical possible. Since then solar dropped in price a lot and oil the other way up. And if you have a european wide grid (high voltage, direct current) you would not need to store for months, because the sun is still shining in the south and wind is blowing somewhere. You only would need to store for the rare situations of little wind and little sun. It will be a mix either way, I am not against nuclear as base load, or backup. But they are expensive, too.
samatman 5y ago
Can't think if any good reason we should. Actual deaths from solar power are higher than actual deaths from nuclear energy, per GW delivered. Solar death is mostly from falling from high places, but so what? Death is death. There's a conversation to have about the long tail but I'll probably start calling people cowards at some point so lets not.
- pydry 5y ago
  It's easy to count somebody who fell off a roof. Statistical deaths from cancers are much easier to sweep under the carpet and most pro nuclear propaganda death counts I've seen do precisely that.
  - samatman 5y ago
    Are you alleging a conspiracy? Show me your numbers if you want me to take you seriously.
    - pydry 5y ago
      https://www.i-sis.org.uk/Chernobyl_Deaths_Top_a_Million.php https://www.i-sis.org.uk/Chernobyl_Deaths_Top_a_Million.php Im not sure if conspiracy is the right word. The special interest groups bullshitting everyone are not necessarily coordinating. Is religion also a conspiracy? Never mind. I believe that I'd feel safer with nuclear if they paid for their own damn insurance and raised the liability cap to "unlimited" but apparently they dont feel its safe enough just yet to raise their financial exposure. What if fukushima happened again? Dealing with that was expensive! Perhaps you could explain why they cant volunteer to shoulder their own risks if theyre so safe? In SPITE of free insurance they still need lavish taxpayer subsidies to be financially viable while wind and solar dont.
      - denton-scratch 5y ago
        > if they paid for their own damn insurance ...including a policy to pay the cost of decommissioning. There isn't a production nuclear power plant in the world that has ever been fully decommissioned. The earliest production plants in the UK have been taken out of service, but decommissioning (so the land they were built on can be re-used) is expected to take the rest of this century.
jonkoops 5y ago
> If you will indulge me the geopolitical fantasy of putting a suitable planetary-scale transmission system in place, is there any particular reason we couldn't switch to all-solar? Just how much would such infrastructure cost? How much resources would we have to mine to facilitate such a massive overhaul to a non-centralized grid? I think when renewables are presented as the only answer it is underestimated how much it would cost in investment in storage and the grid, to a point that I feel nuclear is a fine solution for base-load. I have no numbers though so I cannot back this up or anything.
- socksset 5y ago
  It reminds me of non-developers with ideas for apps/software. As if the idea of getting all our energy from the Sun is an original thought. How do we accomplish this? "I don't know, I am just the idea man. You do all the engineering for my idea and we will split the profit 50/50!"
foobarian 5y ago
Can you check your numbers. 170TW sounds on the low side, PW would be more like it.
- gnfargbl 5y ago
  You're right: ~170PW is the correct number. https://news.mit.edu/2011/energy-scale-part3-1026 https://news.mit.edu/2011/energy-scale-part3-1026
DennisP 5y ago
Both nuclear and a planetary grid are theoretically possible. The real question is what's quicker and cheaper. It seems very unlikely that a planetary grid would be the winner here.
foobiekr 5y ago
Interconnection is a liability.
tsimionescu 5y ago
Transmission losses are something like 3-10% per 1000km for overland cables, and 60% for underwater cables. The Earth has 12000km at the equator, so solar power at night would have to be delivered at 18-60% losses to some areas in the best case; much worse in practice, since you can't realistically have overland cables connecting Eurasia to the Americas. You also are unlikely to have enough space and enough raw materials to construct solar panels that can provide the entire earth's energy needs all-day round, given the huge transmission losses. Furthermore, solar panels have a very short life span - barely 10 years for a decent yield - which means that you would have to constantly mine hevay metals to build new solar panels at a rapid pace just to maintain this setup. It's perhaps a possibility for a distant future, but definitely not something that can be contemplated as a serious solution to the 0-emissions world that we need to hit in the next 30 years.
- csnover 5y ago
  I’m not an expert in this field at all, but from the bit of research I did to try to verify these numbers, the estimates presented here about solar longevity and long-distance transmission seem unrealistically pessimistic. Losses for 800kV HVDC systems are typically documented at ~3.5%/1000km or ~5%/2000km[0], and state-of-the-art 1.1MV systems have losses of ~1.5%/1000km[1][2]. Lower voltage systems have higher losses but I’m not sure why a lower-voltage system or AC system would be used in a project like this. I can’t find any information about increased losses in submarine cables at all; where is that information from, and what is the mechanism that causes that added loss? For solar panels, as far as I can tell, capacity loss occurs at a rate of ~0.3-1% per year depending upon the type of panel, with a median of 0.5%[3]. More modern panels have lower losses than older panels, presumably due to manufacturing improvements. So, after 10 years, you’re talking about something that will produce—on average—5% less power than it did when it was brand new. That’s not something that is broken and needs to be replaced the way you seem to be suggesting. [0] https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC97720/ld-na-27527-en-n.pdf https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29232512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29232512 [2] http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0622/c90000-9474097.html http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0622/c90000-9474097.html [3] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51664.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51664.pdf

edf13 5y ago

Reason why is as you state: >geopolitical fantasy of putting a suitable planetary-scale transmission system in place That combined with geo-politics, war, big oil etc.

DanielVZ 5y ago
Yet we do manage to wire the internet accross oceans and continents.
- r9 5y ago
  The infrastructure scale is not even in the same ballpark, or even neighbourhood. Besides the fact that you can't just "make" internet from a coal/petrol/etc generator somewhere nearby. Imagine a ship's anchor damaging a cable carrying a couple megawatts of power (this happens frequently to the undersea fibre optic cables, and even those are a nightmare to repair).
- edf13 5y ago
  Internet connection doesn't suffer as much power loss over larger distances
- Balero 5y ago
  The internet does not go from A -> B it is a web. You can (and some countries do) cut yourself out of it. But you cannot cut others out of it. Solar generation of power across countries will pretty much go one way. The most obvious and likely one is from North Africa to Europe. If the North African states decide to turn off the power to Europe they can. This is why geo-politically you cannot rely on this as a 100% solution. It can add to a solution, but it is not a good idea to let another country hang a sword over your head like that. (Or more precisely to hang the sword there yourself)

a9h74j 5y ago

> any particular reason Indulging such imagination, which is valuable, one particular reason, as you probably realize, could be resource limits when it comes to actually scaling up solar generation and transmission facilities. Plus, electrification of transportation, if beyond electrified rail, still calls for storage. Here's an analysis of material inputs, focussing on vehicle electrification: https://www.minersoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/3ICM-Michaux.pdf https://www.minersoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/3ICM-Mic...

rich_sasha 5y ago

Europe has its winter all at the same time. Everyone's making their morning tea and heating their houses at the same time. We could, maybe, import all that energy from solar farms in North Africa, but (a) that requires a willing counterparty, and (b) is that actually technically feasible? As in, sign here and pay, we build it for you.

hutzlibu 5y ago
"(b) is that actually technically feasible" It is, see the Desertec initiative. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec It would be just a huge investment, which is why it did not get very far, so far. Also there is indeed the political factor. North africa is not so stable, but of course willing for investment. But even with solar in southern europe alone, you would get quite far, combined with wind and hydro. And if you have excess in summer, you could store that in various ways for the winter. In other words, I believe we do need huge investments into the grid now, connecting europes south and north. And then companys can build more of all kinds of solar and wind farms.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  Correct me if I’m wrong, b it we can maybe, just about, for a lot of money, store electricity for a couple of hours. Maybe days with hydro. Multiple months seems like an impossibility. The link you provided seems to just mention plans and studies, not building subsea electricity cables. Also says > The project failed twice due to the problem of transportation and cost-inefficiency.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    Like I said, it would be a huge investment. But without huge investments, we will not get rid of the dependency of oil or dictators either way. The question is what kind of investment. And the studies of desertec implied that it is technical possible. Since then solar dropped in price a lot and oil the other way up. And if you have a european wide grid (high voltage, direct current) you would not need to store for months, because the sun is still shining in the south and wind is blowing somewhere. You only would need to store for the rare situations of little wind and little sun. It will be a mix either way, I am not against nuclear as base load, or backup. But they are expensive, too.

samatman 5y ago

Can't think if any good reason we should. Actual deaths from solar power are higher than actual deaths from nuclear energy, per GW delivered. Solar death is mostly from falling from high places, but so what? Death is death. There's a conversation to have about the long tail but I'll probably start calling people cowards at some point so lets not.

pydry 5y ago
It's easy to count somebody who fell off a roof. Statistical deaths from cancers are much easier to sweep under the carpet and most pro nuclear propaganda death counts I've seen do precisely that.
- samatman 5y ago
  Are you alleging a conspiracy? Show me your numbers if you want me to take you seriously.
  - pydry 5y ago
    https://www.i-sis.org.uk/Chernobyl_Deaths_Top_a_Million.php https://www.i-sis.org.uk/Chernobyl_Deaths_Top_a_Million.php Im not sure if conspiracy is the right word. The special interest groups bullshitting everyone are not necessarily coordinating. Is religion also a conspiracy? Never mind. I believe that I'd feel safer with nuclear if they paid for their own damn insurance and raised the liability cap to "unlimited" but apparently they dont feel its safe enough just yet to raise their financial exposure. What if fukushima happened again? Dealing with that was expensive! Perhaps you could explain why they cant volunteer to shoulder their own risks if theyre so safe? In SPITE of free insurance they still need lavish taxpayer subsidies to be financially viable while wind and solar dont.
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      > if they paid for their own damn insurance ...including a policy to pay the cost of decommissioning. There isn't a production nuclear power plant in the world that has ever been fully decommissioned. The earliest production plants in the UK have been taken out of service, but decommissioning (so the land they were built on can be re-used) is expected to take the rest of this century.

jonkoops 5y ago

> If you will indulge me the geopolitical fantasy of putting a suitable planetary-scale transmission system in place, is there any particular reason we couldn't switch to all-solar? Just how much would such infrastructure cost? How much resources would we have to mine to facilitate such a massive overhaul to a non-centralized grid? I think when renewables are presented as the only answer it is underestimated how much it would cost in investment in storage and the grid, to a point that I feel nuclear is a fine solution for base-load. I have no numbers though so I cannot back this up or anything.

socksset 5y ago
It reminds me of non-developers with ideas for apps/software. As if the idea of getting all our energy from the Sun is an original thought. How do we accomplish this? "I don't know, I am just the idea man. You do all the engineering for my idea and we will split the profit 50/50!"

foobarian 5y ago

Can you check your numbers. 170TW sounds on the low side, PW would be more like it.

gnfargbl 5y ago
You're right: ~170PW is the correct number. https://news.mit.edu/2011/energy-scale-part3-1026 https://news.mit.edu/2011/energy-scale-part3-1026

DennisP 5y ago

Both nuclear and a planetary grid are theoretically possible. The real question is what's quicker and cheaper. It seems very unlikely that a planetary grid would be the winner here.

foobiekr 5y ago

Interconnection is a liability.

tsimionescu 5y ago

Transmission losses are something like 3-10% per 1000km for overland cables, and 60% for underwater cables. The Earth has 12000km at the equator, so solar power at night would have to be delivered at 18-60% losses to some areas in the best case; much worse in practice, since you can't realistically have overland cables connecting Eurasia to the Americas. You also are unlikely to have enough space and enough raw materials to construct solar panels that can provide the entire earth's energy needs all-day round, given the huge transmission losses. Furthermore, solar panels have a very short life span - barely 10 years for a decent yield - which means that you would have to constantly mine hevay metals to build new solar panels at a rapid pace just to maintain this setup. It's perhaps a possibility for a distant future, but definitely not something that can be contemplated as a serious solution to the 0-emissions world that we need to hit in the next 30 years.

csnover 5y ago
I’m not an expert in this field at all, but from the bit of research I did to try to verify these numbers, the estimates presented here about solar longevity and long-distance transmission seem unrealistically pessimistic. Losses for 800kV HVDC systems are typically documented at ~3.5%/1000km or ~5%/2000km[0], and state-of-the-art 1.1MV systems have losses of ~1.5%/1000km[1][2]. Lower voltage systems have higher losses but I’m not sure why a lower-voltage system or AC system would be used in a project like this. I can’t find any information about increased losses in submarine cables at all; where is that information from, and what is the mechanism that causes that added loss? For solar panels, as far as I can tell, capacity loss occurs at a rate of ~0.3-1% per year depending upon the type of panel, with a median of 0.5%[3]. More modern panels have lower losses than older panels, presumably due to manufacturing improvements. So, after 10 years, you’re talking about something that will produce—on average—5% less power than it did when it was brand new. That’s not something that is broken and needs to be replaced the way you seem to be suggesting. [0] https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC97720/ld-na-27527-en-n.pdf https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29232512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29232512 [2] http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0622/c90000-9474097.html http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0622/c90000-9474097.html [3] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51664.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51664.pdf