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A monoculture of generation and distribution technologies is not a desirable outcome from an engineering perspective. Your goal shouldn't be to put PV everywhe

A monoculture of generation and distribution technologies is not a desirable outcome from an engineering perspective. Your goal shouldn't be to put PV everywhere and then just "solve the distribution problem." You're almost certainly going to make things worse that way. Also.. if you have excess residential electrical supplies, I'd think a good goal would be to get electricity to the people that don't have it first, rather than imagining new industrial processes that rely on continued excesses to function. It all smacks of thinking that the Earth is a giant inconvenient ledger that just needs to be balanced, at any cost, apparently.

gregschlom 4y ago
It sounds like you didn't read the article. They aren't talking about putting solar panels everywhere, they're talking about using massive amounts of solar panel in a specific location and use the energy to convert the CO2 in the air into methane.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  That and nobody has ever suggested that we rely solely on solar for energy needs. Wind, for example, is cheaper than solar (though solar is catching up.)
  - jshen 4y ago
    Wind and solar both need to be combined with something else because it’s not always sunny and windy.
    - whimsicalism 4y ago
      Energy storage
      - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
        Could you be more specific? Because battery energy storage barely works for houses and you can't build pump storage everywhere. Then there are few prototypes like Power-To-Gas which has promising prospect and rest is in level of sci-fi
        tstrimple 4y ago
        These are old talking points. Solar plants with gigawatts of storage are being built right now, today. Costs for such large scale storage are dropping quickly and are estimated to cost half of what they do today in 2030. Nuclear proponents need to update their material with the times. They keep insisting that nuclear is "The Only Way" meanwhile, in reality, we're building renewables backed by storage at higher rates than ever before. Solar plus storage is cheaper and faster to build TODAY than nuclear has ever been. https://electrek.co/2022/03/07/solar-and-battery-storage-make-up-60-of-planned-new-us-electric-generation-capacity/ https://electrek.co/2022/03/07/solar-and-battery-storage-mak...
        adrianN 4y ago
        Power to gas, as you mention, would be sufficient. There are also some interesting battery chemistries in the pipeline, like iron-air batteries. How about we keep building renewables at a rapid pace until we actually have enough to need storage? Until then we have time to improve storage technology and build some electrolyzers (we'll need lots of Hydrogen anyway for industrial purposes).
        TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
        We need storage now as we are burning coal and gas as replacement for energy storage.
        adrianN 4y ago
        We need to do the cheapest thing that reduces CO2 emissions. Currently I believe that's building more renewables and electrifying more sectors.
- akira2501 4y ago
  This is such an odd way to address an argument. From the article: "Substituting solar power into our electrical grid and atmospheric CO2-derived hydrocarbons into our fuel supply chain is just the beginning. We want to support a future of abundance and wealth, while avoiding starvation even as legacy climate damage shifts rainfall patterns and causes extreme weather." Seems pretty one-track to me. Also, there are no manufacturing processes with infinite scalability. And the article fails to make clear their large scale intentions. They go back and forth between some Sarahan style plant, and the total amount of PV available and the current planned excess power due to this and never offer a solid plan as far as I can tell. Aside from that.. it's a back of the envelope analysis that just projects trend lines on charts and makes no thoughts for emergent phenomenon due to the massive market swings it projects.
  - adamrezich 4y ago
    > it's a back of the envelope analysis that just projects trend lines on charts and makes no thoughts for emergent phenomenon due to the massive market swings it projects. seems like there's a lot of this going around recently

gregschlom 4y ago

It sounds like you didn't read the article. They aren't talking about putting solar panels everywhere, they're talking about using massive amounts of solar panel in a specific location and use the energy to convert the CO2 in the air into methane.

KennyBlanken 4y ago
That and nobody has ever suggested that we rely solely on solar for energy needs. Wind, for example, is cheaper than solar (though solar is catching up.)
- jshen 4y ago
  Wind and solar both need to be combined with something else because it’s not always sunny and windy.
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    Energy storage
    - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
      Could you be more specific? Because battery energy storage barely works for houses and you can't build pump storage everywhere. Then there are few prototypes like Power-To-Gas which has promising prospect and rest is in level of sci-fi
      - tstrimple 4y ago
        These are old talking points. Solar plants with gigawatts of storage are being built right now, today. Costs for such large scale storage are dropping quickly and are estimated to cost half of what they do today in 2030. Nuclear proponents need to update their material with the times. They keep insisting that nuclear is "The Only Way" meanwhile, in reality, we're building renewables backed by storage at higher rates than ever before. Solar plus storage is cheaper and faster to build TODAY than nuclear has ever been. https://electrek.co/2022/03/07/solar-and-battery-storage-make-up-60-of-planned-new-us-electric-generation-capacity/ https://electrek.co/2022/03/07/solar-and-battery-storage-mak...
      - adrianN 4y ago
        Power to gas, as you mention, would be sufficient. There are also some interesting battery chemistries in the pipeline, like iron-air batteries. How about we keep building renewables at a rapid pace until we actually have enough to need storage? Until then we have time to improve storage technology and build some electrolyzers (we'll need lots of Hydrogen anyway for industrial purposes).
        TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
        We need storage now as we are burning coal and gas as replacement for energy storage.
        adrianN 4y ago
        We need to do the cheapest thing that reduces CO2 emissions. Currently I believe that's building more renewables and electrifying more sectors.
akira2501 4y ago
This is such an odd way to address an argument. From the article: "Substituting solar power into our electrical grid and atmospheric CO2-derived hydrocarbons into our fuel supply chain is just the beginning. We want to support a future of abundance and wealth, while avoiding starvation even as legacy climate damage shifts rainfall patterns and causes extreme weather." Seems pretty one-track to me. Also, there are no manufacturing processes with infinite scalability. And the article fails to make clear their large scale intentions. They go back and forth between some Sarahan style plant, and the total amount of PV available and the current planned excess power due to this and never offer a solid plan as far as I can tell. Aside from that.. it's a back of the envelope analysis that just projects trend lines on charts and makes no thoughts for emergent phenomenon due to the massive market swings it projects.
- adamrezich 4y ago
  > it's a back of the envelope analysis that just projects trend lines on charts and makes no thoughts for emergent phenomenon due to the massive market swings it projects. seems like there's a lot of this going around recently