6 ms·

How easy is to write $1T, but with that you can basically install enough solar cell to power all of USA energy need.

willmadden 4y ago
Solar can't do that without massive batteries that don't exist. Even then it's not viable in areas where there isn't sufficient sunlight.
- valine 4y ago
  The batteries do exist, but it’s better to use them in cars. If we start diverting our battery supply for grid storage it will drive up the price of EVs.
bboygravity 4y ago
No you can't because solar isn't a continious source and fusion is. No amount of investment into solar power can make the sun magically shine 24 hours a day.
- joe_the_user 4y ago
  Of course you can invest enough and make solar equivalent to continuous power. Solar + reverse hydropower, solar + synthetic fuel manufacture, solar + appropriate sized batteries, solar cranes-with-weights, etc. Solar is so cheap that all those are plausible. Fusion is still far from ready.
  - Helmut10001 4y ago
    I suggest we do not lay all of our eggs in one basket. Climate change can be best countered if we use the sweet spot of all current available and anticipated technologies, including photovoltaic, long & short term storage solutions, and fusion. There is no need to bet on one technology at this stage.
    - Tade0 4y ago
      There is a market need. Solar panels are cheap and the market appears to be fine with unreliable power[0] if it's cheap enough. [0] Unreliable, but predictable that is. You can estimate with decent confidence what the weather will be like tomorrow and you can definitely tell what it's going to be a few hours from now, so energy auctions a day ahead are feasible.
      - liketochill 4y ago
        Do you have week long blackouts currently? In any given year you can count on a week where a panel only produces 10%. It just has to be cloudy or rainy. However much solar we add, even with storage to get through a night, needs some other source to get through the cloudy week, unless we are ok with blackouts.
        Tade0 4y ago
        A panel. Panels spread over hundreds of thousands of square kilometres produce power averaged over that area, so they're much more consistent and predictable. HVDC lines help with this a lot. It has gotten to a point where there are serious plans to build a long, undersea HVDC line from the UK to Morocco which, get this, is poised to cost less than the equivalent(GWh delivered annually) Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant: https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ That's how cheap the combination of solar and HVDC is.
        liketochill 4y ago
        Glad it will work there. There has been local opposition to new transmission lines in the USA (see Maine recently) so when folks say “just build powerlines” all I can think of is the difficulty of the land assembly and permitting. Technically it is easy, it is all the humans in the way that make it hard.
- atoav 4y ago
  Energy storage is not an unsolved issue.
- Cort3z 4y ago
  Batteries
- ramijames 4y ago
  I mean, you could literally build a ring of solar power collectors and microwave transmitters in orbit. It would always have 50% coverage.
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    Or just have a bunch of power lines running east-west.
thehappypm 4y ago
Fusion can give us 10x our energy need. Imagine a world where energy is simply not a blocker for anything.
dahfizz 4y ago
<during the day>. $1T doesn't buy nearly enough batteries for the storage we would need. We should be installing more solar & wind, but that alone is not a solution to our problems.
RobinL 4y ago
Here's some rough numbers, hopefully i haven't made any mistakes: Total US energy generation 2021: 4 trillion kwh Average power generation: 457Gw Cost of Topaz solar farm: $2.5bn Potential output: 550 Mw Cost per Mw $4.5m Spend a trillion on similar capacity, you get 220Gw potential output. But that's assuming you get 550Mw average. In fact, it produces about 1282Gwh output a year, so average is more like 145Mw. So at a rough estimate, you need more like 10 trillion to meet US electricity demand. And that assumes you have unlimited battery storage for free. And of course electricity is a small minority of total energy use. Incidentally, I think it's amazing you get to about 10% of total electricity needs with only $1tr, i.e. around 4% of US national output. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-generation-capacity-and-sales.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-... ```python trillion_dollars = 1e12 mw = 550 cost_farm = 2.5e9 cost_dollar_per_mw = cost_farm/mw num_mw = trillion_dollars/cost_dollar_per_mw num_gw = num_mw/1000 num_gw kwh = 4e12 mw = kw/1000 gw = mw/1000 gw ```
- iamgopal 4y ago
  Don’t forget that, 1 trillion can get you lots of leverage and cost benefits In installation and solar panel production. I’ll do it for 1 trillion.
- Dagonfly 4y ago
  > Cost per MW: $4.5m That's quite high. Here in Germany they assume 530-800€ per kW_peak for a utility-scale ground-mounted system (2021) [0]. You can add additional CAPEX for inflation and expansion of the grid, but <$1500 per kW_peak (aka $1.5m per MW) should be quite possible. Especially if you include scaling effects. If you add batteries for night-time balancing, LCOE roughly doubles for now. Economically, no other energy source will beat non-winter day-time PV in the foreseeable future. Imo, as long as other plants are running during those times, investing in PV is a no-brainer. [0] https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/cost-of-electricity.html https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/cost-o...

Solar can't do that without massive batteries that don't exist. Even then it's not viable in areas where there isn't sufficient sunlight.

valine 4y ago
The batteries do exist, but it’s better to use them in cars. If we start diverting our battery supply for grid storage it will drive up the price of EVs.

bboygravity 4y ago

No you can't because solar isn't a continious source and fusion is. No amount of investment into solar power can make the sun magically shine 24 hours a day.

joe_the_user 4y ago
Of course you can invest enough and make solar equivalent to continuous power. Solar + reverse hydropower, solar + synthetic fuel manufacture, solar + appropriate sized batteries, solar cranes-with-weights, etc. Solar is so cheap that all those are plausible. Fusion is still far from ready.
- Helmut10001 4y ago
  I suggest we do not lay all of our eggs in one basket. Climate change can be best countered if we use the sweet spot of all current available and anticipated technologies, including photovoltaic, long & short term storage solutions, and fusion. There is no need to bet on one technology at this stage.
  - Tade0 4y ago
    There is a market need. Solar panels are cheap and the market appears to be fine with unreliable power[0] if it's cheap enough. [0] Unreliable, but predictable that is. You can estimate with decent confidence what the weather will be like tomorrow and you can definitely tell what it's going to be a few hours from now, so energy auctions a day ahead are feasible.
    - liketochill 4y ago
      Do you have week long blackouts currently? In any given year you can count on a week where a panel only produces 10%. It just has to be cloudy or rainy. However much solar we add, even with storage to get through a night, needs some other source to get through the cloudy week, unless we are ok with blackouts.
      - Tade0 4y ago
        A panel. Panels spread over hundreds of thousands of square kilometres produce power averaged over that area, so they're much more consistent and predictable. HVDC lines help with this a lot. It has gotten to a point where there are serious plans to build a long, undersea HVDC line from the UK to Morocco which, get this, is poised to cost less than the equivalent(GWh delivered annually) Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant: https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ That's how cheap the combination of solar and HVDC is.
        liketochill 4y ago
        Glad it will work there. There has been local opposition to new transmission lines in the USA (see Maine recently) so when folks say “just build powerlines” all I can think of is the difficulty of the land assembly and permitting. Technically it is easy, it is all the humans in the way that make it hard.
atoav 4y ago
Energy storage is not an unsolved issue.
Cort3z 4y ago
Batteries
ramijames 4y ago
I mean, you could literally build a ring of solar power collectors and microwave transmitters in orbit. It would always have 50% coverage.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  Or just have a bunch of power lines running east-west.

thehappypm 4y ago

Fusion can give us 10x our energy need. Imagine a world where energy is simply not a blocker for anything.

dahfizz 4y ago

<during the day>. $1T doesn't buy nearly enough batteries for the storage we would need. We should be installing more solar & wind, but that alone is not a solution to our problems.

RobinL 4y ago

Here's some rough numbers, hopefully i haven't made any mistakes: Total US energy generation 2021: 4 trillion kwh Average power generation: 457Gw Cost of Topaz solar farm: $2.5bn Potential output: 550 Mw Cost per Mw $4.5m Spend a trillion on similar capacity, you get 220Gw potential output. But that's assuming you get 550Mw average. In fact, it produces about 1282Gwh output a year, so average is more like 145Mw. So at a rough estimate, you need more like 10 trillion to meet US electricity demand. And that assumes you have unlimited battery storage for free. And of course electricity is a small minority of total energy use. Incidentally, I think it's amazing you get to about 10% of total electricity needs with only $1tr, i.e. around 4% of US national output. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-generation-capacity-and-sales.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-... ```python trillion_dollars = 1e12 mw = 550 cost_farm = 2.5e9 cost_dollar_per_mw = cost_farm/mw num_mw = trillion_dollars/cost_dollar_per_mw num_gw = num_mw/1000 num_gw kwh = 4e12 mw = kw/1000 gw = mw/1000 gw ```

iamgopal 4y ago
Don’t forget that, 1 trillion can get you lots of leverage and cost benefits In installation and solar panel production. I’ll do it for 1 trillion.
Dagonfly 4y ago
> Cost per MW: $4.5m That's quite high. Here in Germany they assume 530-800€ per kW_peak for a utility-scale ground-mounted system (2021) [0]. You can add additional CAPEX for inflation and expansion of the grid, but <$1500 per kW_peak (aka $1.5m per MW) should be quite possible. Especially if you include scaling effects. If you add batteries for night-time balancing, LCOE roughly doubles for now. Economically, no other energy source will beat non-winter day-time PV in the foreseeable future. Imo, as long as other plants are running during those times, investing in PV is a no-brainer. [0] https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/cost-of-electricity.html https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/cost-o...