4 ms·

> Imagine being so selfish that you are opposed to something that is objectively good for the world A randomly selected house being covered in solar panels is

by wyager 4y ago

> Imagine being so selfish that you are opposed to something that is objectively good for the world A randomly selected house being covered in solar panels is not "objectively good for the world". Please do some research into energy production and distribution economics before having such a strongly-held opinion.

halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
Are we talking about randomly selected houses? I believe the conversation is around large groups of houses utilizing solar and at that scale, it is objectively good.
- wyager 4y ago
  No, it's not. Why would you make such a strong statement when you clearly haven't researched it? There are only a small number of climates where solar installations on homes already on the grid have an expected net positive social externality.
dredmorbius 4y ago
Preventing any house from utiliising solar has a direct and specific negative impact. Even individual-choice solar deployments at small scale have benefits from a testing-and-development standpoint, increasing technical understanding of installation, operation, maintenance, and decommissioning.
- wyager 4y ago
  > Preventing any house from utiliising solar has a direct and specific negative impact. Domestic solar has an extremely tenuous value proposition. If you don't have batteries in your house, you're using the grid as an extremely inefficient subsidy for solar production/load mismatch (externalizing many costs). If you do have batteries in your house, it's more expensive (and less efficient) than using grid power. Domestic solar is usually not a good thing compared to grid power, and any small marginal benefit may easily be outweighed by aesthetic costs.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Solar will require a large land-area deployment. In absolute magnitude, it's roughly equivalent to total built area, and dual-purposing land that's already dedicated to human use rather than appropriating crop or wild landscapes has its benefits. Not all structures can be readily retrofit, but again, blanket prohibitions on aesthetic grounds seems exceedingly short-sighted and petty.
tenpies 4y ago
Exactly. I don't think most solar & wind maximalists realize how little of the world is both optimal for solar panels AND located near a urban centre. Having solar in the middle of the Sahara is utterly worthless because transmission makes it comically inefficient (beyond how inefficient solar is to begin with), and then you take another inefficiency tax storing it in batteries. Having solar panels on a random home will almost certainly be worthless because most major urban centres are not in solar-efficient areas. Who knew humanity doesn't like living where the sun is baking them 18 hrs / day year round? See: https://zeihan.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/globalsolarpotential-01.jpg https://zeihan.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/globalsolarpot... And it's about as bad with wind. If only there were a very efficient, clean, and geographically-independent source of energy we could use that didn't depend on the weather or sun, and could be placed trivially near urban centres.
- stefan_ 4y ago
  We are counting the specific efficiency of the solar panel now to malign solar? And <1200 kw/h per square fucking meter is negligible? The proof is in the pudding. Even with all the structural headwind, people can put solar on their roof and a battery in the basement and trivially source the majority of their own power. Who is going to give you the $15B+ it takes to build your nuclear power plant that needs to run 50+ years when that's what is possible today? That's why no one is building them anymore - it's not plausibly ever going to make money.
  - wyager 4y ago
    > And <1200 kw/h per square fucking meter is negligible Why are you swearing - are you upset about this? It's 0kW/m^2 at night. > people can put solar on their roof and a battery in the basement and trivially source the majority of their own power The key here is "majority". The remaining 20% or whatever is disproportionately expensive, and people who are using solar while connected to the grid are externalizing the vast majority of the negative costs of using solar to other grid participants. If you need to generate 100% of your energy using solar, you need to significantly over-allocate and spend a huge amount on batteries. People who generate "most" of their power using solar would need to spend multiple times as much to go to 100% solar, so A) the approach doesn't scale and B) they're imposing a much higher marginal cost on the grid per joule consumed than a "normal" customer.

by wyager 4y ago

halfmatthalfcat 4y ago

Are we talking about randomly selected houses? I believe the conversation is around large groups of houses utilizing solar and at that scale, it is objectively good.

wyager 4y ago
No, it's not. Why would you make such a strong statement when you clearly haven't researched it? There are only a small number of climates where solar installations on homes already on the grid have an expected net positive social externality.

dredmorbius 4y ago

Preventing any house from utiliising solar has a direct and specific negative impact. Even individual-choice solar deployments at small scale have benefits from a testing-and-development standpoint, increasing technical understanding of installation, operation, maintenance, and decommissioning.

wyager 4y ago
> Preventing any house from utiliising solar has a direct and specific negative impact. Domestic solar has an extremely tenuous value proposition. If you don't have batteries in your house, you're using the grid as an extremely inefficient subsidy for solar production/load mismatch (externalizing many costs). If you do have batteries in your house, it's more expensive (and less efficient) than using grid power. Domestic solar is usually not a good thing compared to grid power, and any small marginal benefit may easily be outweighed by aesthetic costs.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Solar will require a large land-area deployment. In absolute magnitude, it's roughly equivalent to total built area, and dual-purposing land that's already dedicated to human use rather than appropriating crop or wild landscapes has its benefits. Not all structures can be readily retrofit, but again, blanket prohibitions on aesthetic grounds seems exceedingly short-sighted and petty.

tenpies 4y ago

Exactly. I don't think most solar & wind maximalists realize how little of the world is both optimal for solar panels AND located near a urban centre. Having solar in the middle of the Sahara is utterly worthless because transmission makes it comically inefficient (beyond how inefficient solar is to begin with), and then you take another inefficiency tax storing it in batteries. Having solar panels on a random home will almost certainly be worthless because most major urban centres are not in solar-efficient areas. Who knew humanity doesn't like living where the sun is baking them 18 hrs / day year round? See: https://zeihan.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/globalsolarpotential-01.jpg https://zeihan.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/globalsolarpot... And it's about as bad with wind. If only there were a very efficient, clean, and geographically-independent source of energy we could use that didn't depend on the weather or sun, and could be placed trivially near urban centres.

stefan_ 4y ago
We are counting the specific efficiency of the solar panel now to malign solar? And <1200 kw/h per square fucking meter is negligible? The proof is in the pudding. Even with all the structural headwind, people can put solar on their roof and a battery in the basement and trivially source the majority of their own power. Who is going to give you the $15B+ it takes to build your nuclear power plant that needs to run 50+ years when that's what is possible today? That's why no one is building them anymore - it's not plausibly ever going to make money.
- wyager 4y ago
  > And <1200 kw/h per square fucking meter is negligible Why are you swearing - are you upset about this? It's 0kW/m^2 at night. > people can put solar on their roof and a battery in the basement and trivially source the majority of their own power The key here is "majority". The remaining 20% or whatever is disproportionately expensive, and people who are using solar while connected to the grid are externalizing the vast majority of the negative costs of using solar to other grid participants. If you need to generate 100% of your energy using solar, you need to significantly over-allocate and spend a huge amount on batteries. People who generate "most" of their power using solar would need to spend multiple times as much to go to 100% solar, so A) the approach doesn't scale and B) they're imposing a much higher marginal cost on the grid per joule consumed than a "normal" customer.