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The amount of solar panes we need was first impressed upon my by David Mackay's "Without Hot Air"[1]. I personally think solar is a useful tool for certain appl
by maerF0x0 4y ago
The amount of solar panes we need was first impressed upon my by David Mackay's "Without Hot Air"[1]. I personally think solar is a useful tool for certain applications, but powering all of humanity with it feels like a step backwards paradigmatically.
Really roughly speak we can think of solar as a step forward in human compatible photosynthesis.
Humanity went to another tier of energy when we started to harness fire with steam and later internal combustion engines.
Electrical transmission is definitely more convenient than moving bags of rice (stored photosynthesis), pipelines of oil and gas (also stored photosynthesis). This electrical grid can also store its energy through various "batteries"(used loosely) with various entropy.
But nuclear power really seems to be the paradigm shift. Instead of being many steps down the chain from solar nuclear to capturing a minuscule portion, we can capture far far more (the majority?) of it for our uses. I feel like we're just so new at it, we're like early mankind using fire burning ourselves, choking on smoke, and generally unsophisticated comparatively to the incredible control and harness of the power one sees in, say, a racing motorcycle -- firing 14k times per second with perfectly controlled, atomized gasoline and air mixture, compressed to exact ratios...
Such a good article, as someone else mentioned it really is an inspiring subject.
[1]: Chapter on solar: https://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_38.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_38.shtml
- bryanlarsen 4y agoWithout Hot Air and this blog are polar opposites. Without Hot Air uses costs from 2008 and assumes that they won't improve. The costs of solar have reduced by 90% since 2008 so McKay's conclusions are horribly wrong. OTOH Casey Handler is betting his company that the costs will improve from current values.
- maerF0x0 4y agoWhile the cost of the hardware has, many factors still apply such as efficiency and thusly the total area of solar required. You're right though that the book is not up to date, and getting long in the tooth in some aspects.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoEfficiency has almost doubled since 2008 but more importantly efficiency at non optimal angles has improved even more. Put together he's off by about an order of magnitude in the amount of land required. The other factor that is missed is that solar panels are proving to be surprisingly non exclusive in their land usage.
- locallost 4y agoPeople doubting there is enough land to be used for solar panels should check how much land is used for parking lots.
- maerF0x0 4y agoEfficiency may have doubled, but the book used a very optimistic 30% efficiency, which afaik is still quite a bit higher than even current rates.
- philipkglass 4y agoThe book used a very pessimistic 10% efficiency for panels installed in large scale solar farms: https://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_41.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_41.shtml If a breakthrough of solar technology occurs and the cost of photovoltaics came down enough that we could deploy panels all over the countryside, what is the maximum conceivable production? Well, if we covered 5% of the UK with 10%-efficient panels, we’d have 10% × 100 W/m2 × 200 m2 per person ≈ 50 kWh/day/person. I assumed only 10%-efficient panels, by the way, because I imagine that solar panels would be mass-produced on such a scale only if they were very cheap, and it’s the lower-efficiency panels that will get cheap first. Utility scale panels today are commonly a bit over 20%.
- otherme123 4y agoWhat trend makes you think nuclear is going to make a paradigm shift? I keep reading the same "nuclear is the future", but not only it is not improving its costs, it's getting worse. EDF is just broke, and the french citizens are going to pay for it.