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I agree with most of your comment, but this: > We should be blanketing every inch of desert with solar. Please god, no. Solar is so much more useful close to

by titzer 3y ago

I agree with most of your comment, but this: > We should be blanketing every inch of desert with solar. Please god, no. Solar is so much more useful close to where it's consumed, like rooftops and parking lots. Utility-scale solar power projects like this are just more corporate welfare boondoggles. And I happen to think that maybe humanity should learn how to leave some things alone. Deserts have fragile, intricate ecosystems. This fucks them up. We need to learn to stop fucking things up to gobble up more energy.

ericpauley 3y ago
Got numbers to back that up? Intuitively, it is far cheaper to put solar panels on the ground than bespoke micro-installs on every roof.
walrus01 3y ago
Long distance transmission of massive amounts of electricity is a solved problem, it just requires funding and political will to do it. Look at the Pacific DC intertie which takes power from the massive hydroelectric dams associated with the Columbia River down to California. There is no serious reason why solar power plants in the UT, CA, NV, NM and AZ deserts can't transmit power 1000 to 1500 km to far-away loads.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  1500km from those deserts doesn't even begin to reach most major population centers. It needs to get much further than that to be impactful on the bulk of the population.
- Animats 3y ago
  This is what modern long distance transmission looks like.[1] This is a 12 gigawatt line running at 1.2 million volts. China does a lot of this, because the good power sources are in northwest China, and the big loads are in the Southeast. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ2KfrP_R3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ2KfrP_R3s
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Did they ever get their ultra high voltage grid going? Last I checked, it was still in the planning stages, and they were still running coal in the east because they couldn’t tap renewable power from the west. Looks like they are still building: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-state-grid-invest-22-bln-ultra-high-voltage-power-lines-report-2022-08-03/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-state-grid-in... So one link at least according to your video, I would be curious about actual numbers about how much they can move already.
    - Animats 3y ago
      As of 2020 there was about 400 GW of installed UHV transmission in China now. For comparison, Hoover Dam is about 2 GW.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        Source? According to https://rethinkresearch.biz/articles/chinas-uhv-transmission-to-more-than-double-by-2025-to-105-gw/ https://rethinkresearch.biz/articles/chinas-uhv-transmission..., they will be at 105 GW by 2025 (the article is dated 2022). 50% of the power on these lines will be from renewables by 2025 (right now at 43%). I can't find any .cn estimates of UHV capacity.
WaxProlix 3y ago
> Utility-scale solar power projects like this are just more corporate welfare boondoggles Citation strongly needed. Especially in a context where turning sun power into carbon-based fuel wouldn't want to be in a parking lot, but could be near or even colocated with a large solar installation.
- titzer 3y ago
  Ivanpah (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility): $2.2 billion for 392 megawatts, including a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee. It'll be profitable (yay!) ..but that'd pay for 100,000 - 200,000 residential solar panel installs that would primarily benefit...residential homeowners. That'd be a ton of jobs, too. And there'd be no power-company profits. We could crunch numbers on how much more efficient a utility-scale plant is, but look at the reality of who ends up with the money and the profits and who has to keep paying the same damn power bills.
  - atourgates 3y ago
    My biggest case against utiliy-scale solar is that it (can) displace important natural ecosystems. Whereas home or commercial solar nearly always is just displacing rooftops, or parking lot covers.
  - Analemma_ 3y ago
    Ivanpah is a CSP plant; that technology is a dead end and its cost numbers have nothing to do with PV plants, which are the only kind which get built now. With the benefit of hindsight, Ivanpah should never have been built, but at the time both CSP and PV looked competitive, and so it made sense to invest in both. Now it does not.
  - Veserv 3y ago
    That is a solar thermal system not a photovoltaic system. You are comparing different technologys. Last I checked, solar thermal is not a price competitive utility scale generation technology; photovoltaic is. That facility was probably funded as a large scale experiment to investigate the viability of solar thermal at increasing scales (or corruption). The gigawatts of new utility scale PV being brought up every year are largely privately funded and cheaper than existing generation sources (in the current context).
tspike 3y ago
This quote from Wendell Berry often occurs to me in these contexts: "One possibility is just to tag along with the fantasists in government and industry who would have us believe that we can pursue our ideals of affluence, comfort, mobility, and leisure indefinitely. This curious faith is predicated on the notion that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy: domestic oil fields, shale oil, gasified coal, nuclear power, solar energy, and so on. This is fantastical because the basic cause of the energy crisis is not scarcity: it is moral ignorance and weakness of character. We don't know how to use energy or what to use it for. And we cannot restrain ourselves. Our time is characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel energy."
- anonuser123456 3y ago
  Someday, when the last red dwarfs are burning out and all the black holes have evaporated, the Malthusians will get their “see we told you so” moment. Thankfully that day isn’t today.
  - tspike 3y ago
    > when the last red dwarfs are burning out and all the black holes have evaporated An odd timeline to consider, given the speed with which this chapter in existence seems to be unfolding.
- m463 3y ago
  > This curious faith is predicated on the notion that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy: domestic oil fields, shale oil, gasified coal, nuclear power, solar energy, and so on. I think this is like many new technologies - overestimated in the short term, underestimated in the long term. I'm reminded of voice recognition systems. we would be able to talk to our computers! well, that didn't happen, but we did get telephone voice response systems, then you could talk to your car, and now it is ubiquitous.
  - tspike 3y ago
    The idea is less that we can or cannot develop unlimited sources of energy, and more that we have no idea how to use that amount of energy in ways that aren’t destructive.
baron816 3y ago
There are better alternatives than rooftops. Covering canals and reservoirs works well because it also prevents evaporation. Farms and grazing land can also be covered with solar since a lot of plants and animals prefer not to be under direct sunlight all day.
- billythemaniam 3y ago
  Imagine if every big box store parking lot was covered with a solar panel roof? Customers walk to the store in shade and out of rain, cars aren't extremely hot in summer when customer returns, electricity for EVs right there, excess can go to grid or batteries, not disruptive to anyone or ecosystem, large sizes. Obviously someone has to pay for it which is always the tricky bit.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    Here in Santa Fe (and urbanized NM in general), you're seeing this not in big box parking lots (yet), but in public building parking lots (including schools). It is freakin' awesome. I imagine the 2nd graders at school around here, growing up with the idea that you can make electricity from sunlight just as second nature to them as the internet is to all of us freaks here on HN.
    - billythemaniam 3y ago
      Awesome!
  - baron816 3y ago
    Well, I’d prefer there to be much less parking in cities and for those big box parking lots to get filled in with housing or something more useful. But I guess it’s fine to put solar in them for now.
KennyBlanken 3y ago
Utility/grid scale solar isn't just corporate welfare, it's old thinking regarding centralized production. The electrical industry fears becoming a mere 'backup' or network instead of generation and supply. Or people disconnecting from the grid entirely, destroying economic viability of the infrastructure. They're pushing laws in various states that make a structure uninhabitable if it doesn't have a grid connection. The only reason most people need to still be connected to the grid are low solar days and peak usage that the panels alone can't supply. In 10 years you'll probably be able to have an iron flow battery in your basement or backyard that is completely harmless and can meet peak needs, like running an induction stove or a heat pump. At that point, why do you need a grid connection? You don't.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  > At that point, why do you need a grid connection? Because winter happens?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  > At that point, why do you need a grid connection? You don't. I have a 6.7kW ground mount array. It generates 3x our needs in summer, 0.33 of our winter needs (we heat with air-source heat pumps). We'd need a battery as big as our house to deal with that.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Is it fixed angle? If so, is the angle chosen to maximize winter production, or annual production? EDIT: ty!
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      Fixed. Winter.
- kelnos 3y ago
idiotsecant 3y ago
I am an electrical engineer that designs control systems for renewable power production for a living. Curious what makes you think that the overhead and inefficiencies inherent to a million small solar installs is somehow better than a single managed facility benefiting from economy of scale both for maintenance and design. Additionally, curious how you plan to address the problem of adding additional generation to existing way overloaded distribution systems to accomplish this. If this massive hypothetical solar install is all non-grid tied then fine, I guess, but you're losing a substantial amount of the power that's made that way. Distribution systems don't come for free and have many of the same problems as 'last mile' internet. Not terribly complex but expensive en masse, particularly in areas that are not densely populated (which is a lot of the US). There is a reason we spend a lot of money on transmission. Spending a lot of money on distribution helps a very small part of your network. Spending a lot of money on transmission helps a huge part of your network.
- walrus01 3y ago
  In my opinion the greatest benefits for large numbers of discrete small PV installs (with battery) is in places where it's uneconomical to extend the grid. I'll use some hard to reach parts of WA and BC and OR and ID for example. You might be able to build a nice house/cabin on a piece of rural land and find that setting the poles and running lines to bring basic 100A or 200A service to that house will cost $40,000. For 40k you can build quite a large off grid PV system that will have a reasonable ROI on it to serve the same loads, vs. spending 40k one time on construction costs for grid and then $50 to $200 monthly electric bills recurring for a long time after that. As far as grid tied decentralized power systems do I agree with you 100%. It is VERY COSTLY in labor and complications to do something like cover the roof of a Home Depot or similar warehouse-sized structure in grid feeding PV, as compared to doing medium-sized to massive scale ground mount PV on empty land somewhere.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    > For 40k you can build quite a large off grid PV system that will have a reasonable ROI on it to serve the same loads, vs. spending 40k one time on construction costs for grid and then $50 to $200 monthly electric bills recurring for a long time after that. Why would such an off-grid system have any monthly electric bills? Are you just pre-amortizing the cost of replacement batteries? EDIT: I'm an idiot. The bills are for the grid-tied option.
thinkcontext 3y ago
> Utility-scale solar power projects like this are just more corporate welfare boondoggles. Rooftop residential is 2x+ times as expensive as utility scale. Lazard's well regarded annual Levelized Cost of Energy survey puts the range for utility scale at $24 - $96 MWH vs $117 - $282 for residential rooftop. https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost-of-energyplus/ https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost...
- adventured 3y ago
  And we should actually be doing both. For exactly the same reason we should subsidize the cost of nuclear energy to ensure a sustained ~25-40% nuclear base, we should subsidize solar locally (rooftop et al.) and utility scale. The answer isn't either or, it's all of the above.
  - peter422 3y ago
    Also I’d assume the people who physically install rooftop solar are different than the people doing utility scale projects. We should be doing both!
- titzer 3y ago
  > Rooftop residential is 2x+ times as expensive as utility scale. This may be true, but a residential install does eventually pay for itself in 5-10 years, and after that, effectively free power. So it's cheaper and better for consumers. How does that work? Oh yeah, it's because they don't have to pay for the maintenance of the entire distribution network plus the profits of utility companies.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    > it's because they don't have to pay for the maintenance of the entire distribution network How is that going to be paid for?
  - olyjohn 3y ago
    Right you just have to pay for maintenance of all of your own equipment.
anonuser123456 3y ago
>Solar is so much more useful close to where it's consumed, like rooftops and parking lots. Utility-scale solar power projects like this are just more corporate welfare boondoggles. What is more efficient, a utility with dedicated engineers and technicians who spend their days managing an install or clueless homeowners who can’t even be bothered to clear the leaves off their panels? Installation and management for large scale commercial companies is _much_ cheaper. Bespoke rooftop installs require way more permit, engineer, contractor overhead. Oh year and don’t forget to upgrade your roof framing and hope your installer doesn’t ruin your waterproof membrane of your roof. Have a clay tile roof? There’s another 5k in broken roof tiles. Transmission losses are in the noise by comparison. And when your components go out… a small potato install can basically go pound sand. A friend of mine has been out 18 months b/c LG Chem recalled his battery and hasn’t replaced it! They remotely disabled it, so it can’t be used. Contrast that with a utility. LG chem would probably have a dedicated field agent to manage bad batteries for a utility scale buyer. >Deserts have fragile, intricate ecosystems. This fucks them up. We need to learn to stop fucking things up to gobble up more energy. You know what’s worse for desert eco systems than solar installs? Climate change. Gobbling up 25% of the deserts to prevent the other 75% from becoming totally uninhabitable sounds like a bargain to me. We need more solar as soon as possible. Messing up the desert to save the artic and permafrost is a winning bet every time.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > Installation and management for large scale commercial companies is _much_ cheaper. Even when you need to transport it thousands of miles? Thats where most people are in relation to the deserts in the US.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    The tradeoffs: 1. we already have a grid 2. the US southwest is where the sun is. insolation per unit of area is crazy high compared to elsewhere, meaning you need less panels per unit of generating capacity.
  - anonuser123456 3y ago
jrockway 3y ago
> Solar is so much more useful close to where it's consumed I'm not really worried about this. Humanity has already invented the greatest utility-scale battery. Pump water uphill when it's sunny. Let it flow back down, through a turbine, when it's dark out. No lithium needed! People often talk about the space required for pumped hydro, but it's probably a lot less than all the shopping mall parking lots in America.
- ebiester 3y ago
  On the coasts, I think that's viable. It's not viable where water is a valuable resource.
  - dumpsterdiver 3y ago
    I wonder how efficiently a similar solar powered lift system would work for a "dirt battery"? The *dirt battery I have in mind would be a vertical pulley system with small dirt scoops spaced at regular intervals. The scoops would pull dirt from the bottom of the pulley system and bring the material to the top were it is dumped into a mechanically locked, very large container. Over time the container would fill up, and when that stored energy is needed the container could be unlocked, at which point it would power a clockwork of turbines on its way down. Thoughts, critiques?
    - Armisael16 3y ago
      It’s less efficient than normal electric batteries and will take up far more space. Gravitational storage only works in the very particular case of water, where moving it is downhill nearly perfectly efficient and free, and where you can also get free energy from things like rivers feeding in.
      - dumpsterdiver 3y ago
        Yeah, now that you mention it I suspect that the mechanical stress upon a system that lifts dirt (as opposed to one that pumps water) would result in expensive routine maintenance, and possibly even catastrophe (i.e. the chain breaks).
imperfect_light 3y ago
The problem is that it's become so difficult to tie into the grid that projects are being cancelled. There was a NY Times article on this (http://web.archive.org/web/20230226032242/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/climate/renewable-energy-us-electrical-grid.html http://web.archive.org/web/20230226032242/https://www.nytime...) that mentioned that the PJM Interconnection, the biggest US grid, is not even accepting new applications for large projects until 2026.
bsder 3y ago
> Solar is so much more useful close to where it's consumed, like rooftops and parking lots. Yes and no. Yes. In places like Southern California, rooftops and parking lot solar would do a great job of providing power for mid-day consumption. No. This is far less effective in, say, Seattle or Pittsburgh. However, HVDC links are really good at moving power over long distances. The US has lots of places that are effectively completely uninhabited and would make really good spots for solar farms if they had an HVDC link.
specialist 3y ago
Surely u/bit_logic's enthusiastic phrasing was aspirational vs literal. That said, the bottle neck is now expanding and upgrading the grid. u/bit_logic is advocating we continue to build new generators, do not wait for the grid, and use that excess capacity to create green hydrogen. ASAP. aka known as The Correct Answer™. Here's an interview with Andrew Wang of ETFuels, who is executing this strategy, with paying customers, today. "Making shipping fuel with off-grid renewables" [2023/06/28] https://www.volts.wtf/p/making-shipping-fuel-with-off-grid https://www.volts.wtf/p/making-shipping-fuel-with-off-grid https://overcast.fm/+oT_lO0G8Y https://overcast.fm/+oT_lO0G8Y
m463 3y ago
s/desert/unused land/ That said, 100 sq miles of desert is 10 miles by 10 miles. also, distribution systems are pretty efficient, and power can be sent from sunny areas to areas with dimmer sun or clouds.
kelnos 3y ago
Installing solar on residential and commercial rooftops and parking lots is a fantastically inefficient use of time when compared to building utility-scale solar farms. The per-install fixed costs are a lot larger than you'd expect. Consider that, to reduce my own home's draw on the grid to more or less nothing, I'd have to spend $35k (before government incentives, so more like $23k) on a 4kW solar install plus battery storage. As a part of a utility-scale build-out, that $23k will go a lot farther. We already have a ton of experience transporting electricity over large distances. Losses are not zero, but are not significant enough to matter (2-3%, usually). Damage to desert ecosystems is a very important concern. I'm not sure how to solve that. But if an alternative is we fall further behind on saving our planet, the desert ecosystems will suffer there, as well. Overall, I think we should be doing and encouraging both. Local generation is great, but we still need centralized generation.
colordrops 3y ago
My understanding is that you only need to cover a small percentage of available desert to cover all needs.
pstuart 3y ago
Air conditioning is a significant chunk of electricity used, and it would make sense to generate power to run it on site if and when possible. We should have a national program to create zero-interest loans to incite homeowners and businesses to invest in on-site solar when possible. Make the loan payments managed by the power companies so they get a cut of the action and are incentivized to play along. That way, you still are paying the power company monthly bills but most of that is paying down a debt that will eventually go away.
genocidicbunny 3y ago
> And I happen to think that maybe humanity should learn how to leave some things alone. Deserts have fragile, intricate ecosystems. This fucks them up. We need to learn to stop fucking things up to gobble up more energy. A lot of people are responding to your other point about proximity, but I think this is the much more salient one. Deserts are not dead. They are ecosystems too, and just paving over deserts with solar and wind is going to harm those ecosystems. We spend so much time and effort to elucidate the ecological harm that fossil fuel power generation does but we seem to be content to ignore how much damage solar and wind can do too. No, this is not an argument against using solar and wind. We absolutely should be. Just...we need to stop ignoring the costs of these methods. There's no free lunch in this world.
- rdevsrex 3y ago
  Unfortunately, I don't think we get out of this without damaging the environment to some degree. Hell, just mining the copper that goes into this stuff damages the environment. So yes deserts are fragile, but what isn't? Something is going to suffer no matter what.
  - genocidicbunny 3y ago
    My point isn't that we need to avoid the damage, it's that we shouldn't ignore it. It's really no better ignoring the negative consequences of renewables than ignoring the consequences of fossil fuels. They may be less, but as you point out they still exist and we need to do more to mitigate them.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Wouldn’t solar benefit desert ecosystems by providing more shade? Most desert animals are nocturnal anyways, I guess you might even see more activity during the day. I don’t think solar means “paving the desert”, most panels aren’t at ground level, and they aren’t even that close to each other.
  - genocidicbunny 3y ago

by titzer 3y ago

ericpauley 3y ago

Got numbers to back that up? Intuitively, it is far cheaper to put solar panels on the ground than bespoke micro-installs on every roof.

walrus01 3y ago

Long distance transmission of massive amounts of electricity is a solved problem, it just requires funding and political will to do it. Look at the Pacific DC intertie which takes power from the massive hydroelectric dams associated with the Columbia River down to California. There is no serious reason why solar power plants in the UT, CA, NV, NM and AZ deserts can't transmit power 1000 to 1500 km to far-away loads.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
1500km from those deserts doesn't even begin to reach most major population centers. It needs to get much further than that to be impactful on the bulk of the population.
Animats 3y ago
This is what modern long distance transmission looks like.[1] This is a 12 gigawatt line running at 1.2 million volts. China does a lot of this, because the good power sources are in northwest China, and the big loads are in the Southeast. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ2KfrP_R3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ2KfrP_R3s
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Did they ever get their ultra high voltage grid going? Last I checked, it was still in the planning stages, and they were still running coal in the east because they couldn’t tap renewable power from the west. Looks like they are still building: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-state-grid-invest-22-bln-ultra-high-voltage-power-lines-report-2022-08-03/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-state-grid-in... So one link at least according to your video, I would be curious about actual numbers about how much they can move already.
  - Animats 3y ago
    As of 2020 there was about 400 GW of installed UHV transmission in China now. For comparison, Hoover Dam is about 2 GW.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      Source? According to https://rethinkresearch.biz/articles/chinas-uhv-transmission-to-more-than-double-by-2025-to-105-gw/ https://rethinkresearch.biz/articles/chinas-uhv-transmission..., they will be at 105 GW by 2025 (the article is dated 2022). 50% of the power on these lines will be from renewables by 2025 (right now at 43%). I can't find any .cn estimates of UHV capacity.

WaxProlix 3y ago

> Utility-scale solar power projects like this are just more corporate welfare boondoggles Citation strongly needed. Especially in a context where turning sun power into carbon-based fuel wouldn't want to be in a parking lot, but could be near or even colocated with a large solar installation.

titzer 3y ago
Ivanpah (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility): $2.2 billion for 392 megawatts, including a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee. It'll be profitable (yay!) ..but that'd pay for 100,000 - 200,000 residential solar panel installs that would primarily benefit...residential homeowners. That'd be a ton of jobs, too. And there'd be no power-company profits. We could crunch numbers on how much more efficient a utility-scale plant is, but look at the reality of who ends up with the money and the profits and who has to keep paying the same damn power bills.
- atourgates 3y ago
  My biggest case against utiliy-scale solar is that it (can) displace important natural ecosystems. Whereas home or commercial solar nearly always is just displacing rooftops, or parking lot covers.
- Analemma_ 3y ago
  Ivanpah is a CSP plant; that technology is a dead end and its cost numbers have nothing to do with PV plants, which are the only kind which get built now. With the benefit of hindsight, Ivanpah should never have been built, but at the time both CSP and PV looked competitive, and so it made sense to invest in both. Now it does not.
- Veserv 3y ago
  That is a solar thermal system not a photovoltaic system. You are comparing different technologys. Last I checked, solar thermal is not a price competitive utility scale generation technology; photovoltaic is. That facility was probably funded as a large scale experiment to investigate the viability of solar thermal at increasing scales (or corruption). The gigawatts of new utility scale PV being brought up every year are largely privately funded and cheaper than existing generation sources (in the current context).

tspike 3y ago

This quote from Wendell Berry often occurs to me in these contexts: "One possibility is just to tag along with the fantasists in government and industry who would have us believe that we can pursue our ideals of affluence, comfort, mobility, and leisure indefinitely. This curious faith is predicated on the notion that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy: domestic oil fields, shale oil, gasified coal, nuclear power, solar energy, and so on. This is fantastical because the basic cause of the energy crisis is not scarcity: it is moral ignorance and weakness of character. We don't know how to use energy or what to use it for. And we cannot restrain ourselves. Our time is characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel energy."

anonuser123456 3y ago
Someday, when the last red dwarfs are burning out and all the black holes have evaporated, the Malthusians will get their “see we told you so” moment. Thankfully that day isn’t today.
- tspike 3y ago
  > when the last red dwarfs are burning out and all the black holes have evaporated An odd timeline to consider, given the speed with which this chapter in existence seems to be unfolding.
m463 3y ago
> This curious faith is predicated on the notion that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy: domestic oil fields, shale oil, gasified coal, nuclear power, solar energy, and so on. I think this is like many new technologies - overestimated in the short term, underestimated in the long term. I'm reminded of voice recognition systems. we would be able to talk to our computers! well, that didn't happen, but we did get telephone voice response systems, then you could talk to your car, and now it is ubiquitous.
- tspike 3y ago
  The idea is less that we can or cannot develop unlimited sources of energy, and more that we have no idea how to use that amount of energy in ways that aren’t destructive.

baron816 3y ago

There are better alternatives than rooftops. Covering canals and reservoirs works well because it also prevents evaporation. Farms and grazing land can also be covered with solar since a lot of plants and animals prefer not to be under direct sunlight all day.

billythemaniam 3y ago
Imagine if every big box store parking lot was covered with a solar panel roof? Customers walk to the store in shade and out of rain, cars aren't extremely hot in summer when customer returns, electricity for EVs right there, excess can go to grid or batteries, not disruptive to anyone or ecosystem, large sizes. Obviously someone has to pay for it which is always the tricky bit.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  Here in Santa Fe (and urbanized NM in general), you're seeing this not in big box parking lots (yet), but in public building parking lots (including schools). It is freakin' awesome. I imagine the 2nd graders at school around here, growing up with the idea that you can make electricity from sunlight just as second nature to them as the internet is to all of us freaks here on HN.
  - billythemaniam 3y ago
    Awesome!
- baron816 3y ago
  Well, I’d prefer there to be much less parking in cities and for those big box parking lots to get filled in with housing or something more useful. But I guess it’s fine to put solar in them for now.

KennyBlanken 3y ago

Utility/grid scale solar isn't just corporate welfare, it's old thinking regarding centralized production. The electrical industry fears becoming a mere 'backup' or network instead of generation and supply. Or people disconnecting from the grid entirely, destroying economic viability of the infrastructure. They're pushing laws in various states that make a structure uninhabitable if it doesn't have a grid connection. The only reason most people need to still be connected to the grid are low solar days and peak usage that the panels alone can't supply. In 10 years you'll probably be able to have an iron flow battery in your basement or backyard that is completely harmless and can meet peak needs, like running an induction stove or a heat pump. At that point, why do you need a grid connection? You don't.

sanderjd 3y ago
> At that point, why do you need a grid connection? Because winter happens?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> At that point, why do you need a grid connection? You don't. I have a 6.7kW ground mount array. It generates 3x our needs in summer, 0.33 of our winter needs (we heat with air-source heat pumps). We'd need a battery as big as our house to deal with that.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Is it fixed angle? If so, is the angle chosen to maximize winter production, or annual production? EDIT: ty!
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    Fixed. Winter.
kelnos 3y ago

idiotsecant 3y ago

I am an electrical engineer that designs control systems for renewable power production for a living. Curious what makes you think that the overhead and inefficiencies inherent to a million small solar installs is somehow better than a single managed facility benefiting from economy of scale both for maintenance and design. Additionally, curious how you plan to address the problem of adding additional generation to existing way overloaded distribution systems to accomplish this. If this massive hypothetical solar install is all non-grid tied then fine, I guess, but you're losing a substantial amount of the power that's made that way. Distribution systems don't come for free and have many of the same problems as 'last mile' internet. Not terribly complex but expensive en masse, particularly in areas that are not densely populated (which is a lot of the US). There is a reason we spend a lot of money on transmission. Spending a lot of money on distribution helps a very small part of your network. Spending a lot of money on transmission helps a huge part of your network.

walrus01 3y ago
In my opinion the greatest benefits for large numbers of discrete small PV installs (with battery) is in places where it's uneconomical to extend the grid. I'll use some hard to reach parts of WA and BC and OR and ID for example. You might be able to build a nice house/cabin on a piece of rural land and find that setting the poles and running lines to bring basic 100A or 200A service to that house will cost $40,000. For 40k you can build quite a large off grid PV system that will have a reasonable ROI on it to serve the same loads, vs. spending 40k one time on construction costs for grid and then $50 to $200 monthly electric bills recurring for a long time after that. As far as grid tied decentralized power systems do I agree with you 100%. It is VERY COSTLY in labor and complications to do something like cover the roof of a Home Depot or similar warehouse-sized structure in grid feeding PV, as compared to doing medium-sized to massive scale ground mount PV on empty land somewhere.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  > For 40k you can build quite a large off grid PV system that will have a reasonable ROI on it to serve the same loads, vs. spending 40k one time on construction costs for grid and then $50 to $200 monthly electric bills recurring for a long time after that. Why would such an off-grid system have any monthly electric bills? Are you just pre-amortizing the cost of replacement batteries? EDIT: I'm an idiot. The bills are for the grid-tied option.

thinkcontext 3y ago

> Utility-scale solar power projects like this are just more corporate welfare boondoggles. Rooftop residential is 2x+ times as expensive as utility scale. Lazard's well regarded annual Levelized Cost of Energy survey puts the range for utility scale at $24 - $96 MWH vs $117 - $282 for residential rooftop. https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost-of-energyplus/ https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost...

adventured 3y ago
And we should actually be doing both. For exactly the same reason we should subsidize the cost of nuclear energy to ensure a sustained ~25-40% nuclear base, we should subsidize solar locally (rooftop et al.) and utility scale. The answer isn't either or, it's all of the above.
- peter422 3y ago
  Also I’d assume the people who physically install rooftop solar are different than the people doing utility scale projects. We should be doing both!
titzer 3y ago
> Rooftop residential is 2x+ times as expensive as utility scale. This may be true, but a residential install does eventually pay for itself in 5-10 years, and after that, effectively free power. So it's cheaper and better for consumers. How does that work? Oh yeah, it's because they don't have to pay for the maintenance of the entire distribution network plus the profits of utility companies.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  > it's because they don't have to pay for the maintenance of the entire distribution network How is that going to be paid for?
- olyjohn 3y ago
  Right you just have to pay for maintenance of all of your own equipment.

anonuser123456 3y ago

>Solar is so much more useful close to where it's consumed, like rooftops and parking lots. Utility-scale solar power projects like this are just more corporate welfare boondoggles. What is more efficient, a utility with dedicated engineers and technicians who spend their days managing an install or clueless homeowners who can’t even be bothered to clear the leaves off their panels? Installation and management for large scale commercial companies is _much_ cheaper. Bespoke rooftop installs require way more permit, engineer, contractor overhead. Oh year and don’t forget to upgrade your roof framing and hope your installer doesn’t ruin your waterproof membrane of your roof. Have a clay tile roof? There’s another 5k in broken roof tiles. Transmission losses are in the noise by comparison. And when your components go out… a small potato install can basically go pound sand. A friend of mine has been out 18 months b/c LG Chem recalled his battery and hasn’t replaced it! They remotely disabled it, so it can’t be used. Contrast that with a utility. LG chem would probably have a dedicated field agent to manage bad batteries for a utility scale buyer. >Deserts have fragile, intricate ecosystems. This fucks them up. We need to learn to stop fucking things up to gobble up more energy. You know what’s worse for desert eco systems than solar installs? Climate change. Gobbling up 25% of the deserts to prevent the other 75% from becoming totally uninhabitable sounds like a bargain to me. We need more solar as soon as possible. Messing up the desert to save the artic and permafrost is a winning bet every time.

nonethewiser 3y ago
> Installation and management for large scale commercial companies is _much_ cheaper. Even when you need to transport it thousands of miles? Thats where most people are in relation to the deserts in the US.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  The tradeoffs: 1. we already have a grid 2. the US southwest is where the sun is. insolation per unit of area is crazy high compared to elsewhere, meaning you need less panels per unit of generating capacity.
- anonuser123456 3y ago

jrockway 3y ago

> Solar is so much more useful close to where it's consumed I'm not really worried about this. Humanity has already invented the greatest utility-scale battery. Pump water uphill when it's sunny. Let it flow back down, through a turbine, when it's dark out. No lithium needed! People often talk about the space required for pumped hydro, but it's probably a lot less than all the shopping mall parking lots in America.

ebiester 3y ago
On the coasts, I think that's viable. It's not viable where water is a valuable resource.
- dumpsterdiver 3y ago
  I wonder how efficiently a similar solar powered lift system would work for a "dirt battery"? The *dirt battery I have in mind would be a vertical pulley system with small dirt scoops spaced at regular intervals. The scoops would pull dirt from the bottom of the pulley system and bring the material to the top were it is dumped into a mechanically locked, very large container. Over time the container would fill up, and when that stored energy is needed the container could be unlocked, at which point it would power a clockwork of turbines on its way down. Thoughts, critiques?
  - Armisael16 3y ago
    It’s less efficient than normal electric batteries and will take up far more space. Gravitational storage only works in the very particular case of water, where moving it is downhill nearly perfectly efficient and free, and where you can also get free energy from things like rivers feeding in.
    - dumpsterdiver 3y ago
      Yeah, now that you mention it I suspect that the mechanical stress upon a system that lifts dirt (as opposed to one that pumps water) would result in expensive routine maintenance, and possibly even catastrophe (i.e. the chain breaks).

imperfect_light 3y ago

The problem is that it's become so difficult to tie into the grid that projects are being cancelled. There was a NY Times article on this (http://web.archive.org/web/20230226032242/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/climate/renewable-energy-us-electrical-grid.html http://web.archive.org/web/20230226032242/https://www.nytime...) that mentioned that the PJM Interconnection, the biggest US grid, is not even accepting new applications for large projects until 2026.

bsder 3y ago

> Solar is so much more useful close to where it's consumed, like rooftops and parking lots. Yes and no. Yes. In places like Southern California, rooftops and parking lot solar would do a great job of providing power for mid-day consumption. No. This is far less effective in, say, Seattle or Pittsburgh. However, HVDC links are really good at moving power over long distances. The US has lots of places that are effectively completely uninhabited and would make really good spots for solar farms if they had an HVDC link.

specialist 3y ago

Surely u/bit_logic's enthusiastic phrasing was aspirational vs literal. That said, the bottle neck is now expanding and upgrading the grid. u/bit_logic is advocating we continue to build new generators, do not wait for the grid, and use that excess capacity to create green hydrogen. ASAP. aka known as The Correct Answer™. Here's an interview with Andrew Wang of ETFuels, who is executing this strategy, with paying customers, today. "Making shipping fuel with off-grid renewables" [2023/06/28] https://www.volts.wtf/p/making-shipping-fuel-with-off-grid https://www.volts.wtf/p/making-shipping-fuel-with-off-grid https://overcast.fm/+oT_lO0G8Y https://overcast.fm/+oT_lO0G8Y

m463 3y ago

s/desert/unused land/ That said, 100 sq miles of desert is 10 miles by 10 miles. also, distribution systems are pretty efficient, and power can be sent from sunny areas to areas with dimmer sun or clouds.

kelnos 3y ago

Installing solar on residential and commercial rooftops and parking lots is a fantastically inefficient use of time when compared to building utility-scale solar farms. The per-install fixed costs are a lot larger than you'd expect. Consider that, to reduce my own home's draw on the grid to more or less nothing, I'd have to spend $35k (before government incentives, so more like $23k) on a 4kW solar install plus battery storage. As a part of a utility-scale build-out, that $23k will go a lot farther. We already have a ton of experience transporting electricity over large distances. Losses are not zero, but are not significant enough to matter (2-3%, usually). Damage to desert ecosystems is a very important concern. I'm not sure how to solve that. But if an alternative is we fall further behind on saving our planet, the desert ecosystems will suffer there, as well. Overall, I think we should be doing and encouraging both. Local generation is great, but we still need centralized generation.

colordrops 3y ago

My understanding is that you only need to cover a small percentage of available desert to cover all needs.

pstuart 3y ago

Air conditioning is a significant chunk of electricity used, and it would make sense to generate power to run it on site if and when possible. We should have a national program to create zero-interest loans to incite homeowners and businesses to invest in on-site solar when possible. Make the loan payments managed by the power companies so they get a cut of the action and are incentivized to play along. That way, you still are paying the power company monthly bills but most of that is paying down a debt that will eventually go away.

genocidicbunny 3y ago

> And I happen to think that maybe humanity should learn how to leave some things alone. Deserts have fragile, intricate ecosystems. This fucks them up. We need to learn to stop fucking things up to gobble up more energy. A lot of people are responding to your other point about proximity, but I think this is the much more salient one. Deserts are not dead. They are ecosystems too, and just paving over deserts with solar and wind is going to harm those ecosystems. We spend so much time and effort to elucidate the ecological harm that fossil fuel power generation does but we seem to be content to ignore how much damage solar and wind can do too. No, this is not an argument against using solar and wind. We absolutely should be. Just...we need to stop ignoring the costs of these methods. There's no free lunch in this world.

rdevsrex 3y ago
Unfortunately, I don't think we get out of this without damaging the environment to some degree. Hell, just mining the copper that goes into this stuff damages the environment. So yes deserts are fragile, but what isn't? Something is going to suffer no matter what.
- genocidicbunny 3y ago
  My point isn't that we need to avoid the damage, it's that we shouldn't ignore it. It's really no better ignoring the negative consequences of renewables than ignoring the consequences of fossil fuels. They may be less, but as you point out they still exist and we need to do more to mitigate them.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Wouldn’t solar benefit desert ecosystems by providing more shade? Most desert animals are nocturnal anyways, I guess you might even see more activity during the day. I don’t think solar means “paving the desert”, most panels aren’t at ground level, and they aren’t even that close to each other.
- genocidicbunny 3y ago