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Why would I want to cover the entire desert with solar panels instead of having one neat little tube shaped steam box? You know three nuclear power plants (spa

Why would I want to cover the entire desert with solar panels instead of having one neat little tube shaped steam box? You know three nuclear power plants (spanning 19 reactors) in Ontario provide electricity for 9 million people? How many solar panels and wind turbines would you need to put in their place? A solar PV facility must have an installed capacity of 3,300 MW and 5,400 MW to match a 1,000-MW nuclear facility’s output, requiring between 45 and 75 square miles of land cover. That's twice the size of Manhattan. [1] Ontario has a generating capacity of 13.5GWe of nuclear energy. That would be almost 1000 square miles of solar panel - 4x the city of Toronto. I actually don't really care that nuclear's more expensive. It's the better option. [1] https://www.nei.org/news/2015/land-needs-for-wind-solar-dwarf-nuclear-plants https://www.nei.org/news/2015/land-needs-for-wind-solar-dwar...

wumpus 5y ago
This appears to be a "no, we didn't spend the same amount of money on solar and wind." Glad you don't care nuclear is more expensive! That's a winning argument.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  I don't care if something is more expensive if it's better haha. Sometimes better things are more expensive. That's why we have subsidies. And yes, I do consider covering an area 4X the size of Toronto with solar panels to be worse than the 3 small buildings in the middle of nowhere (Bruce, Darlington, Pickering) we have now. I'm saying spending the same amount on solar would leave us worse off. There's a role for both, together.
  - wumpus 5y ago
    You said: > If we'd started building reactors when we first said it'd take too long, we'd have all the reactors we need. Instead of saying it's going to take too long, let's just start :) ... and apparently you don't care that there was an alternative that would already be producing a lot of power? Because it doesn't matter how much money you think could have built reactors, the reactor-building community is screwed up.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - dev_tty01 5y ago
      How does solar produce substantial power in northern and southern latitudes for several months of the year? How about at night? How about during long cloudy periods? Solar usually ends up with carbon based backup. It should be nuclear instead. For solar to really work, it will take massive energy storage capabilities. That is NOT ready to deploy. Until then, solar will only be a partial solution at best. Anyone who wants carbon free power generation should be pro-solar AND pro-nuclear.
      - onethought 5y ago
        Country the size of Australia could actually build sizeable solar assets across multiple timezones. The "backup problem" is a storage problem that could be solved more locally to the consumption. (houses with batteries, or suburbs, or cities, or states). The "night time" generation problem is a bit BS given electricity demand drops significantly at nigh in Australia, so the storage requirement is no where near the generation requirement. Just some thoughts. Australia has enough unutilised land mass to generate the global power demand a couple of times over, North Africa also does... so you could build a solution that requires no storage at all.
        tfigment 5y ago
        There is very high demand from 6-10 pm and lesser in morning when solar is not available or very diminished. Also solar still needs cleaning all of those panels. Solar requires rare earths and that is surprisingly toxic manufacturing/refining process. Distribution and transmission is also not as easy as just building everything in Africa and sending it elsewhere. We need a mix of systems in practice.
        ncmncm 5y ago
        Solar does not, in fact, require rare earths. (And, incidentally, "rare earths" are very, very far from rare; that is just a name.) And, the cost to clean them once in a while is very low. You are reaching. The fact is that renewables are the cheapest source of power that has ever happened on this planet, and they are still getting cheaper. Storage is likewise cheap and very quickly getting much, much cheaper. By the time we actually need any, you will not notice the cost.
- modo_mario 5y ago
  Do you consider energy storage in the cost calculation?
jseban 5y ago
But solar has the benefit that it doesn't need to be centralised, people can cover their own roofs and have a battery to be self sufficient and now you don't even need a grid.
- clarionbell 5y ago
  Until they need replacement components for any of this. Which they will need evry couple of years. Then they will need centralized infrastructure in form of manufacturing plants, roads, rail and finally (because it is imported from China most likely) ports. Every step producing greenhouse gasses or other pollution. Self sufficiency of this sort is largely a sub-urban myth. A comfortable, optimistic one, but a myth nonetheless.
  - DocTomoe 5y ago
    In other news, the solar cells installed on the White House by Carter apparently still provided energy ten years ago [1], and those who were not broken deliberately likely still do today. I am all for nuclear - but let's keep the discussion honest. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-hous...
    - clarionbell 5y ago
      Those are not solar cells, those are water heaters. In the interest of being honest. No wonder they still work, those are literally water pipes embedded in a roof panel. No inverter, no battery, nothing. The only thing they have in common with solar cells people install today is the fact that they are powered by sun.
      - nicoburns 5y ago
        Worth noting that people do still install those today in addition to PV panels. PV panels seem to get 20-30 years of use, which isn’t bad at all. And I believe they usually still work after that time, just with reduced efficiency.
adrianN 5y ago
You don't need to cover the entire desert. One or two percent are probably enough to meet Australia's primary energy demand.
- ben_w 5y ago
  Even better: 0.05% (assuming 20% efficient panels and a 25% capacity factor). Australia is enormous and has a tiny population.
ben_w 5y ago
> Nuclear Energy Institute analysis has found (And 2015) Meanwhile, the Pavagada Solar Plant in India is rated at 2050 MW, with a footprint of 37 km^2, or 14 miles^2. Though if you really want to compare like-for-like environments, I think a better comparison is the Noor Abu Dhabi, which is rated at 1177 MW with a footprint of 8 km^2, or 3 miles^2. And of course that’s in addition to possibly of reaching a significant fraction of demand with rooftop PV, which is otherwise wasted space and which nuclear reactors can’t use. Heck, you can put the PV onto the outside surfaces etc. of the nuclear reactor if you want. Or between the wind turbines.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  I have nothing against dollar but the way. I’m all for a mix of nuclear and renewables to effectively meet our energy demand. Nuclear is great for providing base load.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    No, nuclear is actually not that great for that. You need a power source that is cheap to scale up to cover discrepancies between supply and demand. If you build nuclear capacity for that you might as well just run it all the time and not build renewables. Nuclear has very small marginal costs, but huge up front capital expenses. You really don't want to run it at 10% load most of the year to cover the times where neither the sun shines not the wind blows.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      Indeed I was talking about using nuclear to provide a constant base load that you do not scale up and down. You use renewables for variable load.
      - dale_glass 5y ago
        But that ceases to make any sense the second you have renewables cheaper than nuclear. Then renewables start cutting into that base load as well, whenever they can.
Gatsky 5y ago
Yeah but I don’t think nuclear is politically viable. It has bad connotations for your average punter, and it looks extremely expensive because all the externalities are priced in. Very unlikely our listless politicians would take on the nuclear cause. Can you imagine building a nuclear waste dump on land under native title?
pfdietz 5y ago
The land argument against solar is economically foolish. In most places, the value off land is a tiny fraction of the cost of the solar installation. We have lots and lots of land, far more than is needed to power global industrial society with solar energy, and that land is very cheap. If the cost of land ever did become a global constraint on solar energy, it would be because the other parts of solar had become incredibly cheap. At that point, solar would already have consigned all other energy sources to oblivion. The value produced per hectare per year from a PV field is much greater than many other current uses of land, such as raising lifestock, growing grain, or commercial forestry. If solar is deemed impractical because of land usage, so should those other uses.

wumpus 5y ago

This appears to be a "no, we didn't spend the same amount of money on solar and wind." Glad you don't care nuclear is more expensive! That's a winning argument.

arcticbull 5y ago
I don't care if something is more expensive if it's better haha. Sometimes better things are more expensive. That's why we have subsidies. And yes, I do consider covering an area 4X the size of Toronto with solar panels to be worse than the 3 small buildings in the middle of nowhere (Bruce, Darlington, Pickering) we have now. I'm saying spending the same amount on solar would leave us worse off. There's a role for both, together.
- wumpus 5y ago
  You said: > If we'd started building reactors when we first said it'd take too long, we'd have all the reactors we need. Instead of saying it's going to take too long, let's just start :) ... and apparently you don't care that there was an alternative that would already be producing a lot of power? Because it doesn't matter how much money you think could have built reactors, the reactor-building community is screwed up.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dev_tty01 5y ago
    How does solar produce substantial power in northern and southern latitudes for several months of the year? How about at night? How about during long cloudy periods? Solar usually ends up with carbon based backup. It should be nuclear instead. For solar to really work, it will take massive energy storage capabilities. That is NOT ready to deploy. Until then, solar will only be a partial solution at best. Anyone who wants carbon free power generation should be pro-solar AND pro-nuclear.
    - onethought 5y ago
      Country the size of Australia could actually build sizeable solar assets across multiple timezones. The "backup problem" is a storage problem that could be solved more locally to the consumption. (houses with batteries, or suburbs, or cities, or states). The "night time" generation problem is a bit BS given electricity demand drops significantly at nigh in Australia, so the storage requirement is no where near the generation requirement. Just some thoughts. Australia has enough unutilised land mass to generate the global power demand a couple of times over, North Africa also does... so you could build a solution that requires no storage at all.
      - tfigment 5y ago
        There is very high demand from 6-10 pm and lesser in morning when solar is not available or very diminished. Also solar still needs cleaning all of those panels. Solar requires rare earths and that is surprisingly toxic manufacturing/refining process. Distribution and transmission is also not as easy as just building everything in Africa and sending it elsewhere. We need a mix of systems in practice.
        ncmncm 5y ago
        Solar does not, in fact, require rare earths. (And, incidentally, "rare earths" are very, very far from rare; that is just a name.) And, the cost to clean them once in a while is very low. You are reaching. The fact is that renewables are the cheapest source of power that has ever happened on this planet, and they are still getting cheaper. Storage is likewise cheap and very quickly getting much, much cheaper. By the time we actually need any, you will not notice the cost.
modo_mario 5y ago
Do you consider energy storage in the cost calculation?

jseban 5y ago

But solar has the benefit that it doesn't need to be centralised, people can cover their own roofs and have a battery to be self sufficient and now you don't even need a grid.

clarionbell 5y ago
Until they need replacement components for any of this. Which they will need evry couple of years. Then they will need centralized infrastructure in form of manufacturing plants, roads, rail and finally (because it is imported from China most likely) ports. Every step producing greenhouse gasses or other pollution. Self sufficiency of this sort is largely a sub-urban myth. A comfortable, optimistic one, but a myth nonetheless.
- DocTomoe 5y ago
  In other news, the solar cells installed on the White House by Carter apparently still provided energy ten years ago [1], and those who were not broken deliberately likely still do today. I am all for nuclear - but let's keep the discussion honest. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-hous...
  - clarionbell 5y ago
    Those are not solar cells, those are water heaters. In the interest of being honest. No wonder they still work, those are literally water pipes embedded in a roof panel. No inverter, no battery, nothing. The only thing they have in common with solar cells people install today is the fact that they are powered by sun.
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      Worth noting that people do still install those today in addition to PV panels. PV panels seem to get 20-30 years of use, which isn’t bad at all. And I believe they usually still work after that time, just with reduced efficiency.

adrianN 5y ago

You don't need to cover the entire desert. One or two percent are probably enough to meet Australia's primary energy demand.

ben_w 5y ago
Even better: 0.05% (assuming 20% efficient panels and a 25% capacity factor). Australia is enormous and has a tiny population.

ben_w 5y ago

> Nuclear Energy Institute analysis has found (And 2015) Meanwhile, the Pavagada Solar Plant in India is rated at 2050 MW, with a footprint of 37 km^2, or 14 miles^2. Though if you really want to compare like-for-like environments, I think a better comparison is the Noor Abu Dhabi, which is rated at 1177 MW with a footprint of 8 km^2, or 3 miles^2. And of course that’s in addition to possibly of reaching a significant fraction of demand with rooftop PV, which is otherwise wasted space and which nuclear reactors can’t use. Heck, you can put the PV onto the outside surfaces etc. of the nuclear reactor if you want. Or between the wind turbines.

arcticbull 5y ago
I have nothing against dollar but the way. I’m all for a mix of nuclear and renewables to effectively meet our energy demand. Nuclear is great for providing base load.
- adrianN 5y ago
  No, nuclear is actually not that great for that. You need a power source that is cheap to scale up to cover discrepancies between supply and demand. If you build nuclear capacity for that you might as well just run it all the time and not build renewables. Nuclear has very small marginal costs, but huge up front capital expenses. You really don't want to run it at 10% load most of the year to cover the times where neither the sun shines not the wind blows.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Indeed I was talking about using nuclear to provide a constant base load that you do not scale up and down. You use renewables for variable load.
    - dale_glass 5y ago
      But that ceases to make any sense the second you have renewables cheaper than nuclear. Then renewables start cutting into that base load as well, whenever they can.

Gatsky 5y ago

Yeah but I don’t think nuclear is politically viable. It has bad connotations for your average punter, and it looks extremely expensive because all the externalities are priced in. Very unlikely our listless politicians would take on the nuclear cause. Can you imagine building a nuclear waste dump on land under native title?

pfdietz 5y ago

The land argument against solar is economically foolish. In most places, the value off land is a tiny fraction of the cost of the solar installation. We have lots and lots of land, far more than is needed to power global industrial society with solar energy, and that land is very cheap. If the cost of land ever did become a global constraint on solar energy, it would be because the other parts of solar had become incredibly cheap. At that point, solar would already have consigned all other energy sources to oblivion. The value produced per hectare per year from a PV field is much greater than many other current uses of land, such as raising lifestock, growing grain, or commercial forestry. If solar is deemed impractical because of land usage, so should those other uses.