4 ms·

No it doesn’t. Just provision 10x more solar then. Intermittency solved. (And yes, it’s still cheaper than say, nuclear even if you provision 10x)

sofixa 3y ago
What about a multi-month event with overcast weather with low winds over a whole continent (it was the case across most of Europe in 2020)? Just over provision by 100x? Is it still cheaper if you include all the land used?
- onethought 3y ago
  Pretty sure it stays quite sunny in the desert. Also, there are quite a lot of deserts around the world. The land given it serves no other purpose is probably not expensive.
  - sofixa 3y ago
    How do you transport the electricity from the desert to where it's actually needed? Transmission losses and infrastructure costs make that cost prohibitive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o
    - onethought 3y ago
      I think as other have pointed out HVDC lines make it a possibility. I don't quite understand the point made in the video about "expensive infrastructure to convert AC to DC"... wouldn't solar farms be generating in DC? Is the infrastructure in order to get the voltage up? Couldn't I string enough solar panels to increase the voltage? We are already doing projects like this [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link
littlestymaar 3y ago
> Just provision 10x more solar then. Intermittency solved. For my country (France) IIRC it would require something like 30x more solar to cope with clouds + low light during winter. Take UK or northern Europe and you'd need 50x. > And yes, it’s still cheaper than say, nuclear even if you provision 10x What are you smoking? Also it would generate about 100 times more wastes (not talking about high activity waste of course, in which case it would be like a million time more waste)
- onethought 3y ago
  What waste does a solar panel generate? Or are you talking about the manufacturing process? So you’re saying building nuclear plants generates less waste than building solar farms? That’s unintuitive
  - kgabis 3y ago
    Of course nuclear generates less waste than intermittent sources like solar or wind. Nuclear occupies orders of magnitude less land, requires less concrete, steel, copper, aluminium. And it's still comparing apples to oranges since nuclear is not intermittent and doesn't require building extra storage and grid infrastructure to account for variability.
    - onethought 3y ago
      Oh, you are saying something that is used productively is waste. So nuclear plants waste heaps of water. By your measure.
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    > What waste does a solar panel generate? Or are you talking about the manufacturing process? I'm talking about the panels themselves after they reached their end of life. > So you’re saying building nuclear plants generates less waste than building solar farms? That’s unintuitive Nuclear power density is incredibly high: you build 1 concrete bunker and 3 supporting buildings and you have more than a gigawatt of power. For solar you need a square kilometer of solar panels to get 0.1GW. Compare those two places next to where I live: - the nuclear plant: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/47.7311/2.5188 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/47.7311/2.5188 - the solar farm: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/47.7229/2.6665 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/47.7229/2.6665 Roughly the same area. The solar farm has 55MW of power. The nuclear plant has 3.6GW, 65 times higher. And the nuclear plant's life will be 60 years at least, which means that over its lifetime the panels would need to be changed 3 times. And that's if there's no hail to damage them… And this calculation only counts Power, if you did the same calculation for actual energy produced the difference would be around ten time worse.

sofixa 3y ago

What about a multi-month event with overcast weather with low winds over a whole continent (it was the case across most of Europe in 2020)? Just over provision by 100x? Is it still cheaper if you include all the land used?

onethought 3y ago
Pretty sure it stays quite sunny in the desert. Also, there are quite a lot of deserts around the world. The land given it serves no other purpose is probably not expensive.
- sofixa 3y ago
  How do you transport the electricity from the desert to where it's actually needed? Transmission losses and infrastructure costs make that cost prohibitive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o
  - onethought 3y ago
    I think as other have pointed out HVDC lines make it a possibility. I don't quite understand the point made in the video about "expensive infrastructure to convert AC to DC"... wouldn't solar farms be generating in DC? Is the infrastructure in order to get the voltage up? Couldn't I string enough solar panels to increase the voltage? We are already doing projects like this [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link

littlestymaar 3y ago

> Just provision 10x more solar then. Intermittency solved. For my country (France) IIRC it would require something like 30x more solar to cope with clouds + low light during winter. Take UK or northern Europe and you'd need 50x. > And yes, it’s still cheaper than say, nuclear even if you provision 10x What are you smoking? Also it would generate about 100 times more wastes (not talking about high activity waste of course, in which case it would be like a million time more waste)

onethought 3y ago
What waste does a solar panel generate? Or are you talking about the manufacturing process? So you’re saying building nuclear plants generates less waste than building solar farms? That’s unintuitive
- kgabis 3y ago
  Of course nuclear generates less waste than intermittent sources like solar or wind. Nuclear occupies orders of magnitude less land, requires less concrete, steel, copper, aluminium. And it's still comparing apples to oranges since nuclear is not intermittent and doesn't require building extra storage and grid infrastructure to account for variability.
  - onethought 3y ago
    Oh, you are saying something that is used productively is waste. So nuclear plants waste heaps of water. By your measure.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > What waste does a solar panel generate? Or are you talking about the manufacturing process? I'm talking about the panels themselves after they reached their end of life. > So you’re saying building nuclear plants generates less waste than building solar farms? That’s unintuitive Nuclear power density is incredibly high: you build 1 concrete bunker and 3 supporting buildings and you have more than a gigawatt of power. For solar you need a square kilometer of solar panels to get 0.1GW. Compare those two places next to where I live: - the nuclear plant: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/47.7311/2.5188 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/47.7311/2.5188 - the solar farm: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/47.7229/2.6665 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/47.7229/2.6665 Roughly the same area. The solar farm has 55MW of power. The nuclear plant has 3.6GW, 65 times higher. And the nuclear plant's life will be 60 years at least, which means that over its lifetime the panels would need to be changed 3 times. And that's if there's no hail to damage them… And this calculation only counts Power, if you did the same calculation for actual energy produced the difference would be around ten time worse.