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It's really interesting to see that pretty much everybody in the industry agrees that wind and solar are the future after having read https://www.lynalden.com/e

It's really interesting to see that pretty much everybody in the industry agrees that wind and solar are the future after having read https://www.lynalden.com/energy-problems/ https://www.lynalden.com/energy-problems/. That piece seems to argue that wind & solar are some of the least efficient energy generation sources.

efnx 4y ago
Efficient in what sense? Compared to how much energy it costs to get energy out over the lifetime of the mechanical device, or simply turning the fuel into energy?
ehnto 4y ago
It's because efficiency is only a small part of the conversation. Someone putting panels on their roof only cares insofar as it helps decide which solar panels to buy. They are buying solar because it goes on their roof, costs less than grid power, and they own the generation (what that means to someone changes) Likewise a municipality putting in a solar farm is probably doing it because it's cheap and easy to maintain, easier to distribute across your city, and when compared to a big machinery based plant like a fossil fuel plant, both wind and solar take less educated skills from the municipality to install and maintain. Solar is essentially commoditized at this point, it's barrier for entry is for a municipality is just money. Wind is productized too, just more complex and difficult to install and maintain than solar.
- viknesh 4y ago
  That makes sense, and also suggests that governments with more centralized planning might skew more heavily towards nuclear. I'm not sure if that's actually true in practice (because obviously there are many non-efficiency related reasons that people don't like nuclear), but it would be interesting to see if there is a relationship between centralized energy planning and amount of solar/wind/nuclear energy consumed.
mrtksn 4y ago
If the actual source is extremely powerful, does the efficiency matter? The whole life on earth is solar powered since billions of years and it works very well and organisms did develop efficient energy storage for the times when the sun isn't shining. IMHO solar is a proven source of energy that just needs more engineering to improve practicality. It kind of feel like we are getting there. What I would like to see is nuclear power dedicated in producing solar energy hardware. After all, these things are not exotic and it's matter of putting energy into converting some abundant raw materials into solar cells.
- Findeton 4y ago
  Solar and wind are intermittent sources of energy and Nat Gas, Coal or even Nuclear are needed to back solar/wind when they don't work, which is 70-80% of the time! You can see here (wind energy generation is the red one) how crazy it would be to think wind could replace gas/nuclear energy. And this is not a single wind tower but for the whole Ontario province. https://i.imgur.com/XvOAF17.jpg https://i.imgur.com/XvOAF17.jpg
  - mrtksn 4y ago
    Notice how the animal and plant life on earth continues at night even if they don't use Nat Gas, Coal or Nuclear.
    - Findeton 4y ago
      Because they store energy as fat. Electric systems can't do that.
      - mrtksn 4y ago
        In other words, they store the energy chemically. Interesting, maybe it is a clue how to make electric systems store energy when the sun isn't shining.
        4y ago
tchaffee 4y ago
More efficient only if you ignore cleanup costs. Fixing climate change isn't a freebie.
xxs 4y ago
What? Actually solar is pretty decent, even generates DC - lots of stuff is DC nowadays, incl. all direct drives and induction cooking (incl. the obvious all electronics). Both wind and solar are pretty decent at capturing the only (non-nuclear) energy source the Earth has - the Sun.
- alex_duf 4y ago
  The only non-nuclear source would be geothermal, and maybe tidal I believe? The sun is literally a nuclear fusion reaction. Wind and hydro are an artefact of the sun + the motion of the planets. We could even stretch the argument that fossil fuels are also indirectly solar from photosynthesis. Maybe it was a typo?
  - xxs 4y ago
    Not a typo - pretty much all the energy that we get on Earth is the just the Sun - which indeed is nuclear (perhaps i should have said fission). "Geothermal" pumps are solar, too (the earth being heated conserving energy), I suppose the term is used a bit too widely - with the Earth core/spinning being a vastly different source. Your point stands though. I meant type of energy that's readily available on Earth - either Sun based (fossil, solar, wind, hydro - all directly depend on the Sun), or nuclear fission. We don't have any fusion available, yet - that would be a real change.
xeyownt 4y ago
The linked article seems very pro-nuclear. What a surprise. "Nuclear power has historically been one of the safest and cleanest energy sources." Again the same bullshit.
- viknesh 4y ago
  Historically speaking, this seems true. My understanding is that you're only looking at hydrocarbons (coal/gas), nuclear, and hydro, since everyone else is pretty new. Hydro is obviously the cleanest/safest, and nuclear has killed far fewer people than coal/gas.
  - infoseek12 4y ago
    Surprisingly Hydro may actually be the source of power with the most direct deaths [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure]. The deaths from the Banqiao dam failure alone dwarf the entire history of nuclear power.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  If you calculate by deaths per TWh produced, Nuclear is #2, Solar #1: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p... Even hydropower is 43 more fatal than nuclear.
  - xeyownt 4y ago
    We see that wind/nuclear/solar are all far "safer" than other sources (wind 0.04 / nuclear 0.03 / solar 0.02 death/TWh). However, death rate is only one metric for safety. Fukushima may not have made (yet) lot of deaths, but it sure impacted a huge population, and will do so for many years to come. One has to look at the impact of an incident. Once installed, solar or wind poses very little risk to you or your neighbors, even in case of natural disasters. And even in the case of the worst impact (deaths), this impact is limited in time/space. This is absolutely not the case of nuclear. Moreover, how do you evaluate the risk of nuclear waste?
boredhedgehog 4y ago
The prediction generates subsidies, which in turn make the prediction come true.

efnx 4y ago

Efficient in what sense? Compared to how much energy it costs to get energy out over the lifetime of the mechanical device, or simply turning the fuel into energy?

ehnto 4y ago

It's because efficiency is only a small part of the conversation. Someone putting panels on their roof only cares insofar as it helps decide which solar panels to buy. They are buying solar because it goes on their roof, costs less than grid power, and they own the generation (what that means to someone changes) Likewise a municipality putting in a solar farm is probably doing it because it's cheap and easy to maintain, easier to distribute across your city, and when compared to a big machinery based plant like a fossil fuel plant, both wind and solar take less educated skills from the municipality to install and maintain. Solar is essentially commoditized at this point, it's barrier for entry is for a municipality is just money. Wind is productized too, just more complex and difficult to install and maintain than solar.

viknesh 4y ago
That makes sense, and also suggests that governments with more centralized planning might skew more heavily towards nuclear. I'm not sure if that's actually true in practice (because obviously there are many non-efficiency related reasons that people don't like nuclear), but it would be interesting to see if there is a relationship between centralized energy planning and amount of solar/wind/nuclear energy consumed.

mrtksn 4y ago

If the actual source is extremely powerful, does the efficiency matter? The whole life on earth is solar powered since billions of years and it works very well and organisms did develop efficient energy storage for the times when the sun isn't shining. IMHO solar is a proven source of energy that just needs more engineering to improve practicality. It kind of feel like we are getting there. What I would like to see is nuclear power dedicated in producing solar energy hardware. After all, these things are not exotic and it's matter of putting energy into converting some abundant raw materials into solar cells.

Findeton 4y ago
Solar and wind are intermittent sources of energy and Nat Gas, Coal or even Nuclear are needed to back solar/wind when they don't work, which is 70-80% of the time! You can see here (wind energy generation is the red one) how crazy it would be to think wind could replace gas/nuclear energy. And this is not a single wind tower but for the whole Ontario province. https://i.imgur.com/XvOAF17.jpg https://i.imgur.com/XvOAF17.jpg
- mrtksn 4y ago
  Notice how the animal and plant life on earth continues at night even if they don't use Nat Gas, Coal or Nuclear.
  - Findeton 4y ago
    Because they store energy as fat. Electric systems can't do that.
    - mrtksn 4y ago
      In other words, they store the energy chemically. Interesting, maybe it is a clue how to make electric systems store energy when the sun isn't shining.
      - 4y ago

tchaffee 4y ago

More efficient only if you ignore cleanup costs. Fixing climate change isn't a freebie.

xxs 4y ago

What? Actually solar is pretty decent, even generates DC - lots of stuff is DC nowadays, incl. all direct drives and induction cooking (incl. the obvious all electronics). Both wind and solar are pretty decent at capturing the only (non-nuclear) energy source the Earth has - the Sun.

alex_duf 4y ago
The only non-nuclear source would be geothermal, and maybe tidal I believe? The sun is literally a nuclear fusion reaction. Wind and hydro are an artefact of the sun + the motion of the planets. We could even stretch the argument that fossil fuels are also indirectly solar from photosynthesis. Maybe it was a typo?
- xxs 4y ago
  Not a typo - pretty much all the energy that we get on Earth is the just the Sun - which indeed is nuclear (perhaps i should have said fission). "Geothermal" pumps are solar, too (the earth being heated conserving energy), I suppose the term is used a bit too widely - with the Earth core/spinning being a vastly different source. Your point stands though. I meant type of energy that's readily available on Earth - either Sun based (fossil, solar, wind, hydro - all directly depend on the Sun), or nuclear fission. We don't have any fusion available, yet - that would be a real change.

xeyownt 4y ago

The linked article seems very pro-nuclear. What a surprise. "Nuclear power has historically been one of the safest and cleanest energy sources." Again the same bullshit.

viknesh 4y ago
Historically speaking, this seems true. My understanding is that you're only looking at hydrocarbons (coal/gas), nuclear, and hydro, since everyone else is pretty new. Hydro is obviously the cleanest/safest, and nuclear has killed far fewer people than coal/gas.
- infoseek12 4y ago
  Surprisingly Hydro may actually be the source of power with the most direct deaths [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure]. The deaths from the Banqiao dam failure alone dwarf the entire history of nuclear power.
theshrike79 4y ago
If you calculate by deaths per TWh produced, Nuclear is #2, Solar #1: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p... Even hydropower is 43 more fatal than nuclear.
- xeyownt 4y ago
  We see that wind/nuclear/solar are all far "safer" than other sources (wind 0.04 / nuclear 0.03 / solar 0.02 death/TWh). However, death rate is only one metric for safety. Fukushima may not have made (yet) lot of deaths, but it sure impacted a huge population, and will do so for many years to come. One has to look at the impact of an incident. Once installed, solar or wind poses very little risk to you or your neighbors, even in case of natural disasters. And even in the case of the worst impact (deaths), this impact is limited in time/space. This is absolutely not the case of nuclear. Moreover, how do you evaluate the risk of nuclear waste?

boredhedgehog 4y ago

The prediction generates subsidies, which in turn make the prediction come true.