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> A 300W-solar power farm would require 1.5 million solar panels and cost approximately $300 million, provided the 1,500- to-1,800 acres of land. I assume 300W

> A 300W-solar power farm would require 1.5 million solar panels and cost approximately $300 million, provided the 1,500- to-1,800 acres of land. I assume 300W is actually 300MW. If that's correct, solar panels are still much more convenient, also considering that power plant will require many acres of land for the building, pipes, etc. Solar panels have zero waste too. What am I missing?

rdsubhas 4y ago
Winter. Edit: I wonder why you had to copy/paste only part part of the line. They literally address this in the next word: > ...provided the 1,500- to-1,800 acres of land needed was free and the sun shone steadily
- slimebot80 4y ago
  Ah yes. There is no sun in winter.
  - orthecreedence 4y ago
    There's no sun under 5 feet of snow. There's also much less sun in overcast. And even less sun at northern latitudes. Oh, and bonus, wildfire smoke blotting out the sun regularly in the summers now! Seems sensible to pick a power source that doesn't depend on the sun with that many variables.
  - oceanplexian 4y ago
    I’ve lived in places in the US where the sun didn’t shine for an entire month in a particularly bad season. I have no idea what a month long utility-grade battery looks like but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist.
  - krzyk 4y ago
    In winter solars produce fraction of the energy that they do in summer. You would need to oversize them 10x or even more. But then, during summer it would be wasted, unless you have a large accumulator.
  - jeltz 4y ago
    Yes, that is a thing in parts of the world.
    - slimebot80 4y ago
      But they were discussing a particular part, no?
- gibolt 4y ago
  Solar actually thrives in the winter. Panels' enemy is heat, and snow is happy to soak that up and quickly melt, sliding itself off. Even during overcast or rainy days, you'd be surprised how much sun energy still comes through.
ErikVandeWater 4y ago
In 20-30 years you'll have 1.5 million solar panels to dispose of. It's not zero waste at all. We're also talking Canada, which isn't the best for consistent sunlight.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  Recycling for solar panels is already being worked on. Recovering things like silver is pretty interesting. The main challenge is waiting for obsolete panels. Just not a huge business yet. Nuclear plants also need decommissioning of course. Seems to be expensive due to all the radioactive material. Canada has plenty of sun. Most of the populated parts are at the same latitude as central Europe. They have hydro and wind too. And not a very large population.
  - ErikVandeWater 4y ago
    People place higher expectations on recycling than is merited. I'm not arguing it's better or worse than nuclear in the long run. Just saying there is waste. Also, latitude is irrelevant. If central Europe got as much snow as Canada they'd probably have far less solar panels.
    - jillesvangurp 4y ago
      The flip-side is that there are not a lot of toxic or harmful materials in solar panels. It's mostly silicon (aka sand). Nobody talks about recycling coal. Not a thing. You burn it, it's gone and added to our atmosphere. Burning the equivalent in coal for even a single solar panel's life time production in energy, is probably quite a lot. Latitude is very relevant. Germans put lots of solar on their roofs for the same reason that that is probably a popular thing in Canada. Because they are at the same latitude. Toronto is at 44 degrees latitude. Berlin is further North at 52 degrees latitude. Madrid would be 40 degrees latitude. Most of the US is below 49 degrees latitude. Most of Canadian populated areas get more than enough sunlight. You might have a point with northern Canada or Alaska. Though those too get awesome amounts of light in the summer, which is why you might find people investing in solar there too. Just lots of economic benefits even if they work less well in the winter (or not at all in the polar circle). As it is, it makes plenty of sense for Germans to put solar on their roofs.
inasio 4y ago
Ontario and Saskatchewan extend pretty far north (Saskatchewan all the way to the arctic circle), very little sunlight in the winter.
oceanplexian 4y ago
Even if Saskatchewan was in the middle of the desert the solar panels had perfect efficiency, it would still produce half the power of a similarly rated base load nuclear plant. And Canada isn’t a desert and some places don’t receive sunlight for weeks at a time.
orthecreedence 4y ago
> solar panels are still much more convenient Until night hits. Then it turns out you need a ton more solar panels to overproduce in the day to store energy in your expensive energy storage system. Which is inconvenient.
- gibolt 4y ago
  Except it turns out we don't use much energy at night... Solar aligns very well with daily energy demands, and storage helps smooth it out. In the end we will have a massive energy surplus and finding ways to use that extra energy will be big business.
  - orthecreedence 4y ago
    Do people use much energy during the day in winter though? At higher latitudes, the sun doesn't shine nearly as long, and the days are often overcast for weeks on end. Your storage needs to smooth over weeks, not hours! The cost of that storage, and the solar array, would be much higher than the nuclear plant.
    - gibolt 4y ago
      You'd be surprised at how low grid-scale solar/wind plus storage costs have dropped, especially once taking into account full lifetime operating costs. Optimally, you build an energy mix for the worst day of the year, not storing *electrical energy for the long term (other types like heat/pimped hydro may make sense at those timescales)
    - tonyarkles 4y ago
      > Do people use much energy during the day in winter though? Saskatchewanian here! Your use of the word "energy" here is critical. We use a ton of _energy_ non-stop through the winter. Looking through the last year worth of statements, my wife and I used 1,794 m^2 of natural gas in Feb 2022, and 59 m^2 of natural gas in June 2022. Conversely, we seem to average about 700-800 kWh of electricity every month, but last August we used 1,456 kWh and the most recent bill had 1,159 kWh (electric air conditioning). We use a crap load of natural gas to heat our homes throughout the winter, and that basically drops to nil during the summer (only the hot water heater). Electricity varies less, but there are huge summer spikes. What nuclear does, from my PoV, is give us not only a road out of burning coal (ick) for our base load electricity, but also makes electric-heat-conversion a more viable proposal. While the temperatures do get cold enough sometimes that a heat pump/HRV loses its effectiveness, getting to a point where we have a COP of 3-4 using the heat pump and backing it up with resistive heating is a huge win if the electricity powering those devices isn't coming from a coal-fired plant. Typically the coldest days are near peak darkness with clear skies and no wind.
Krssst 4y ago
Capacity factor: actual yearly energy produced is 10-25% of capacity for solar, 89% for nuclear. Storage cost.
- wewxjfq 4y ago
  Just some days ago Australia's National Science Agency published a report where they found that renewables with integration costs remain the cheapest option. Naturally that submission didn't do well on HN because it isn't nuclear energy fluff. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32053537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32053537

rdsubhas 4y ago

Winter. Edit: I wonder why you had to copy/paste only part part of the line. They literally address this in the next word: > ...provided the 1,500- to-1,800 acres of land needed was free and the sun shone steadily

slimebot80 4y ago
Ah yes. There is no sun in winter.
- orthecreedence 4y ago
  There's no sun under 5 feet of snow. There's also much less sun in overcast. And even less sun at northern latitudes. Oh, and bonus, wildfire smoke blotting out the sun regularly in the summers now! Seems sensible to pick a power source that doesn't depend on the sun with that many variables.
- oceanplexian 4y ago
  I’ve lived in places in the US where the sun didn’t shine for an entire month in a particularly bad season. I have no idea what a month long utility-grade battery looks like but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist.
- krzyk 4y ago
  In winter solars produce fraction of the energy that they do in summer. You would need to oversize them 10x or even more. But then, during summer it would be wasted, unless you have a large accumulator.
- jeltz 4y ago
  Yes, that is a thing in parts of the world.
  - slimebot80 4y ago
    But they were discussing a particular part, no?
gibolt 4y ago
Solar actually thrives in the winter. Panels' enemy is heat, and snow is happy to soak that up and quickly melt, sliding itself off. Even during overcast or rainy days, you'd be surprised how much sun energy still comes through.

ErikVandeWater 4y ago

In 20-30 years you'll have 1.5 million solar panels to dispose of. It's not zero waste at all. We're also talking Canada, which isn't the best for consistent sunlight.

jillesvangurp 4y ago
Recycling for solar panels is already being worked on. Recovering things like silver is pretty interesting. The main challenge is waiting for obsolete panels. Just not a huge business yet. Nuclear plants also need decommissioning of course. Seems to be expensive due to all the radioactive material. Canada has plenty of sun. Most of the populated parts are at the same latitude as central Europe. They have hydro and wind too. And not a very large population.
- ErikVandeWater 4y ago
  People place higher expectations on recycling than is merited. I'm not arguing it's better or worse than nuclear in the long run. Just saying there is waste. Also, latitude is irrelevant. If central Europe got as much snow as Canada they'd probably have far less solar panels.
  - jillesvangurp 4y ago
    The flip-side is that there are not a lot of toxic or harmful materials in solar panels. It's mostly silicon (aka sand). Nobody talks about recycling coal. Not a thing. You burn it, it's gone and added to our atmosphere. Burning the equivalent in coal for even a single solar panel's life time production in energy, is probably quite a lot. Latitude is very relevant. Germans put lots of solar on their roofs for the same reason that that is probably a popular thing in Canada. Because they are at the same latitude. Toronto is at 44 degrees latitude. Berlin is further North at 52 degrees latitude. Madrid would be 40 degrees latitude. Most of the US is below 49 degrees latitude. Most of Canadian populated areas get more than enough sunlight. You might have a point with northern Canada or Alaska. Though those too get awesome amounts of light in the summer, which is why you might find people investing in solar there too. Just lots of economic benefits even if they work less well in the winter (or not at all in the polar circle). As it is, it makes plenty of sense for Germans to put solar on their roofs.

inasio 4y ago

Ontario and Saskatchewan extend pretty far north (Saskatchewan all the way to the arctic circle), very little sunlight in the winter.

oceanplexian 4y ago

Even if Saskatchewan was in the middle of the desert the solar panels had perfect efficiency, it would still produce half the power of a similarly rated base load nuclear plant. And Canada isn’t a desert and some places don’t receive sunlight for weeks at a time.

orthecreedence 4y ago

> solar panels are still much more convenient Until night hits. Then it turns out you need a ton more solar panels to overproduce in the day to store energy in your expensive energy storage system. Which is inconvenient.

gibolt 4y ago
Except it turns out we don't use much energy at night... Solar aligns very well with daily energy demands, and storage helps smooth it out. In the end we will have a massive energy surplus and finding ways to use that extra energy will be big business.
- orthecreedence 4y ago
  Do people use much energy during the day in winter though? At higher latitudes, the sun doesn't shine nearly as long, and the days are often overcast for weeks on end. Your storage needs to smooth over weeks, not hours! The cost of that storage, and the solar array, would be much higher than the nuclear plant.
  - gibolt 4y ago
    You'd be surprised at how low grid-scale solar/wind plus storage costs have dropped, especially once taking into account full lifetime operating costs. Optimally, you build an energy mix for the worst day of the year, not storing *electrical energy for the long term (other types like heat/pimped hydro may make sense at those timescales)
  - tonyarkles 4y ago
    > Do people use much energy during the day in winter though? Saskatchewanian here! Your use of the word "energy" here is critical. We use a ton of _energy_ non-stop through the winter. Looking through the last year worth of statements, my wife and I used 1,794 m^2 of natural gas in Feb 2022, and 59 m^2 of natural gas in June 2022. Conversely, we seem to average about 700-800 kWh of electricity every month, but last August we used 1,456 kWh and the most recent bill had 1,159 kWh (electric air conditioning). We use a crap load of natural gas to heat our homes throughout the winter, and that basically drops to nil during the summer (only the hot water heater). Electricity varies less, but there are huge summer spikes. What nuclear does, from my PoV, is give us not only a road out of burning coal (ick) for our base load electricity, but also makes electric-heat-conversion a more viable proposal. While the temperatures do get cold enough sometimes that a heat pump/HRV loses its effectiveness, getting to a point where we have a COP of 3-4 using the heat pump and backing it up with resistive heating is a huge win if the electricity powering those devices isn't coming from a coal-fired plant. Typically the coldest days are near peak darkness with clear skies and no wind.

Krssst 4y ago

Capacity factor: actual yearly energy produced is 10-25% of capacity for solar, 89% for nuclear. Storage cost.

wewxjfq 4y ago
Just some days ago Australia's National Science Agency published a report where they found that renewables with integration costs remain the cheapest option. Naturally that submission didn't do well on HN because it isn't nuclear energy fluff. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32053537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32053537