16 ms·
Water surfaces are a great place for solar farms (the water provides cooling which improves efficiency), but the real deal are open sea platforms, not lake-base
by t_mann 4y ago
Water surfaces are a great place for solar farms (the water provides cooling which improves efficiency), but the real deal are open sea platforms, not lake-based. The engineering challenges seem big, though, I'm aware of only one company deploying those successfully.
But it has promising potential: seas form the majority of the globe's surface, and solar sea platforms seem to be, perhaps surprisingly, biodiversity hotspots. Any solid structure in the ocean will attract dwellers, but those platforms also seem very popular with fish gathering underneath in large numbers.
- colinmhayes 4y agoOffshore solar also neutralizes one of solars biggest downsides which is that is uses far more space than traditional generators. Land will only continue to get more expensive so I suspect this will actually become a problem at some point, especially in high density countries.
- karterk 4y agoThere are many large arid, desert-like land available in almost every part of the world which can be put to use for Solar. I don't think cost of land is a huge issue.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- chipsa 4y agoIf you put solar in the desert SW, and intend for it to power homes in New England, how much does the transmission lines to move that power cost? And how much do you lose in transit?
- Mwow 4y agoAnother idea I saw on yt a few months back: Charge some solid state battery (it's not battery it was something better) and then transport it. Similar on how we ship oil across the planet.
- foxyv 4y agoRobert A. Heinlein wrote a book called Friday that had something like this. They would use huge solar arrays to charge proprietary solid state batteries called Shipstones which were used everywhere. There wasn't even a power grid anymore because people would just buy a Shipstone and put it into their house and replace it every so often like coal in a coal bin.
- johncearls 4y agoI love Friday and just reread it last weekend. Often I think that Elon Musk believes he is a character in a Heinlein novel. Tesla is Shipstone, the cars are just a mechanism to build better batteries. SpaceX, that's just DD Harriman from the man who sold the moon/sail beyond the sunset. The Boring company is how you build Luna City ala The moon is a harsh mistress. Or maybe a space catapult. Or maybe, I'm just hoping for Heinleinian hero.
- ncmncm 4y agoAnti-hero, more like. Or, in the instant case, over-funded buffoon.
- ch4s3 4y agoI think the problem here is the weight of the batteries and the need for power to move them. Maybe hydrogen by electrolysis would be more favorable, but then you need to pipe in water.
- chipsa 4y agoYou don't necessarily need to pipe the water to the electricity, you can move the electricity to where the water is (and if the electrolysis works with seawater, you don't need freshwater either). And then you can turn it into something like Methane or Ammonia for longer term storage. And the long term storage is important to level the power production over the course of months.
- 4y ago
- tragictrash 4y agoThere is an efficiency loss, but the problem is actually the cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure. Theres plenty of resources out there around this idea.
- zdragnar 4y agoI don't recall where I had seen it, but there was a study at some point on the cost of covering the Sahara in solar panels. The CO2 emissions from the resources for the transmission lines- in steel and concrete especially- meant it would be a net positive CO2 contributor even after shuttering fossil fuel power plants.
- nine_k 4y agoThis means that we need to learn how to build transmission lines with less steel and concrete. Use more aluminum maybe? More plastics and carbon fiber? More glass?
- bobthepanda 4y agoplastics and carbon fiber are made with hydrocarbons generally. Aluminum might actually be worse, since aluminum requires very high amounts of energy to produce.
- ncmncm 4y agoSolar energy used to produce aluminum has zero marginal cost. So, unless you assume use of fossil fuels to produce the power used to refine the aluminum, this is nonsense.
- nine_k 4y agoHydrocarbons are not a problem per se. It's burning the hydrocarbons, specifically the carbon part, which has the detrimental effect on climate. Plastics and carbon fiber effectively keep the carbon from becoming CO₂. Aluminum takes a lot of energy, but, unlike steel, the process does not release any CO₂, and is fully electric. It can be powered by hydro (and often is), nuclear, or solar energy directly.That's the point.
- t_mann 4y agoWell, ideally you want to produce the electricity close to where it's needed, and a significant proportion of the world's population lives in coastal areas (much more than near deserts I suppose).
- tragictrash 4y agoThis. You can't produce all of the worlds electricity in deserts and ship it around the world
- ch4s3 4y agoAs a thought experiment I once imagined electric trains running between populated areas and desert solar farms. Maybe they carry "green hydrogen" or perhaps just big batteries. After a few minutes and a good chuckle I moved on.
- tragictrash 4y agoWe have these 'electricity trains' already in a sense, but they are tractor trailers containing fuel oil. It's not as crazy as it sounds, but there are better solutions available.
- bobthepanda 4y agoUsually, the issue with this kind of thing is that * this is a form of energy transmission that requires labor for the actual transport (the train crew) and so is automatically much more expensive and difficult than a dumb pipeline or power line which requires much less staffing * it's hard to create energy storage that isn't also a bomb in the wrong conditions, and train tracks pass through populated areas. Fuel already has restrictions on where it can be routed because there have been fuel train explosions.
- craftkiller 4y agoWhy not? Australia is going to be exporting its solar power to Indonesia through a 2,800 mile direct current cable[1]. Thats approximately the width of the mainland united states. It won't be as efficient as generating it nearby but if its already commercially viable then it will only become more viable as solar becomes cheaper and more abundant. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link.
- barney54 4y agoThe cost of land might to be a huge issue with deserts, but the cost of transmission is.
- nine_k 4y agoTransmission from Arizona or Nevada to California looks reasonable. The cost may be reasonable, too, at least the Nevada part.
- bombcar 4y agoThe eastern half of Southern California is already desert so you might as well just use that, though one of them had trouble getting of the ground and costs weren't the greatest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_Dunes_Solar_Energy_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_Dunes_Solar_Energy_Pr... Others, including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility are doing better
- ncmncm 4y agoExcept, desert is a dumb place to put solar.
- ncmncm 4y agoYet, the cost of transmission is not. A long transmission line might be expensive to build in the first place, but operating expense is near zero. That is not the reason solar in the desert is a dumb idea. The dumb idea is putting it where it is maximally hot, instead of spread out in farmland where it is actively beneficial and also generates revenue year-round.
- dragontamer 4y agoDesert-like land is terrible for solar panels because the solar panels get too hot (and lose efficiency). The big, successful desert solar power projects I've seen are giant arrays of mirrors using some kind of weird heat engine, rather than PV-cells. Cheap, widespread desert solar power would be good to figure out, but with regards to PV-cells, desert environments look like a no-go.
- dmurray 4y agoHow much efficiency do they lose? Desert land is orders of magnitude cheaper than German farmland, and the latter appears to be economic to cover in PV panels, so if we could get the cost of materials down we could deal with losing 20% or maybe even 90% efficiency.
- dragontamer 4y agoI don't know the answer to your question, but lets assume 20%. If PVs are 20% less efficient in the desert, you'll need 25% more PVs. (Ex: Instead of buying 1MW worth of panels, you need 1.25MW of panels to generate only 1MW of power) If PVs are lol 90% less efficient in the desert, you'll need 900% more PVs (instead of buying 1MW worth of panels, you need 10MW worth of panels to make 1MW) ----------- Because PVs are the "expensive part" of solar power (and land is really, really cheap, even German Farmland), we're more interested in reducing the number of PV-panels to buy, rather than reducing the cost of land acquisition.
- ncmncm 4y agoPanels that normally get 20% conversion efficiency are typically 12% in the desert summer. So, a huge loss. You want your solar panels mixed into farm and pasture land, instead. Which there is quite a lot of.
- ncmncm 4y agoLand use is absolutely no problem at all for solar. Solar coexists synergetically with agriculture, operating more efficiently, cutting water demand, and improving yield. Also with parking (keeping cars cooler) and roofs (extending life).
- t_mann 4y agoI'd be curious if there are sources showing that solar panels could improve agricultural productivity, but I have doubts, since plants and panels compete for the same resource, sunlight. In terms of cooling, it should be noted that contrary to popular belief, solar panels heat up whatever is underneath them, they don't cool.
- ncmncm 4y agoYou may doubt, but most plants can only use a small amount of light. Once that is exceeded, they endure any more, and benefit from relief. Some crops lose a bit of yield, shaded, like wheat, but the value of power year-round exceeds the loss.
- algo_trader 4y ago> only one company deploying those successfully. which one? i specifically recall a membrane based design, and the other a floating grid also, are there estimates of costs ? Edit: lake floats are ~30% more expensive at the system level. i am asking about ocean systems
- t_mann 4y agohttps://swimsol.com/ https://swimsol.com/ Disclaimer: I know someone who works there. These are meant for ocean deployment, right now I believe they mostly use them in locations with somewhat tempered wave conditions like atolls and bays. It's a floating grid structure that holds the panels a few feet above the water. I don't work there myself, for cost estimates,... you'd have to contact them.
- ncmncm 4y agoAt last report there were 3 GW of floating solar. That number is surely higher already.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Melatonic 4y agoGreat idea but then again we come back to the problem of getting that power back to land. I imagine ocean currents complicate linking these things together or with big cables back to land - not to mention big storms. I do really like the idea of fish gathering below the platform - multiuse stuff is always great. We could probably also do some hydropower while were at it! Best use case for something like this seems like for powering remote outposts and islands - land is at a premium at these places often plus you probably do not want to be clearing large areas of uniquely biodiverse land for power delivery. Some giant ones off the coast of Fiji could be a cool one for sure!
- jlengrand 4y agoI would imagine the problem for offshore solar farms wouldn't be bigger as for offshore windmills? That is a relatively expensive, but also not that difficult problem today? What did I miss?
- spinach 4y agoWaves.
- notatoad 4y agoAre you saying that waves don't exist around offshore wind farms?
- ncmncm 4y agoWaves will tend to destroy floating offshore solar farms. Wind farms are less affected because their cross-sectional area near the water surface is small relative to their mass. But if the panels were in a semi-flexible frame with underwater floats, the waves could be made to mostly run under them.
- miketery 4y ago> ocean currents complicate linking these things together or with big cables back to land They would be connected by cables to the ocean floor (depends on depth I presume). But the currents shouldn't be an issue. Storms unless there is debris should also be fine (but I don't know what ocean weather is like). Cables back to land are indeed an issue, especially with high energy. Maybe we'll come up with efficient energy guns, or create fuel on said platforms (hydrogen?).