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Solar generates fifth of global electricity on summer solstice midday peak

148 points by dotcoma 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
grecy 2y ago
I did my part. I just wrapped up installing a 7.3kW system on my roof at 49.5°N. Yesterday was the highest day of output so far, 50.17 kWh I'm extremely happy and can't stop checking the app. Our first bill just came in, -$57.
- stavros 2y ago
  I really like rooftop solar, as an idea. It might not be the cheapest way to generate electricity, but it's good to know you aren't as dependent on the grid. It's like having your own vegetable garden. Hopefully, with advances in battery technology, homes can become completely independent of the grid.
  - blondie9x 2y ago
    I wish it was this simple. All energy is still borrowed. Mining and producing and disposing of solar panels is still very energy intensive. Renewable energy is a piece of what needs to be a much larger effort to fight climate change.
    - stavros 2y ago
      Sure, it's energy intensive, but if that energy comes from the sun, who cares? I don't understand we keep using "energy intensive" as a euphemism for "emits carbon". The two aren't synonymous. Energy-intensive processes aren't a problem at all, the problem is dirty energy generation processes. Fix your energy generation, and there's no problem.
      - cogman10 2y ago
        There's a (diminishing) correlation that shouldn't be ignored. I'm not saying we should abandon solar because of that correlation but it should at least be factored in. For example, I think it's a dumb idea to turn every road into a "solar road" just because "who cares".
        stavros 2y ago
        I was replying to a specific argument: That producing solar panels is energy-intensive, and thus bad (this part was implied). My counterargument is that energy-intensive is irrelevant when you've got basically-free, clean energy. If your energy is dirty, fix your energy. Don't make downstream consumers feel bad instead.
        cogman10 2y ago
        I don't disagree, just taking the conversation a slightly different direction as I think you'll agree that the "it takes energy to make renewables" argument is generally made in bad faith. I think there is irresponsible consumption of solar panels, particularly when it's done more as a performative action rather than actually producing power to be used.
        mlyle 2y ago
        Yah. I am glad we are deemphasizing residential solar. Utility-scale solar has better capacity factors and installation economics. I think it's going to be barely possible to keep our current quality of life and reach a low-CO2 economy. We have limited resources, and even if a residential solar panel "pays back" its energy in 2.5 years, we are better off putting it in a desert where it will pay back that energy in a year.
        mulmen 2y ago
        What about the economies of scale? Does/did residential solar create enough demand to ramp up utility scale production?
    - dgacmu 2y ago
      Yes, you have to analyze the embodied energy, but solar panels are energy positive within 1-2 years these days: https://www.quora.com/How-much-more-energy-do-solar-panels-produce-in-their-lifetime-than-is-used-to-make-them-How-does-this-energy-return-on-energy-investment-compare-with-other-technologies https://www.quora.com/How-much-more-energy-do-solar-panels-p... It's really a no-brainer up to a certain amount of your grid mix (and that amount can be quite high).
    - cogman10 2y ago
      This is an old trope that's not longer accurate pretty much across the board for renewables/batteries. Also.. Mining for solar panels has never been the major energy cost. Solar panels are primarily silicon (re: sand). The actual energy expensive part for them is/was melting the sand into glass. Even the next major element, aluminum for the brackets, accounts for far more energy expenditure than the mining of the doping agents. Even for windmills, the major energy cost isn't mining, it's the smelting the steel for the tower. Renewable energy is a piece of the puzzle and not everything. It's a major and important piece. Switching the grid away from fossil fuels accounts for a huge portion of emissions and renewables are some of the fastest and cheapest to deploy solutions currently.
    - mrshadowgoose 2y ago
      It is that simple. "Energy intensive" is irrelevant. On average, a solar panel will capture more energy in its lifetime than the amount used to create and eventually recycle it. So please stop repeating that useless whine.
      - sitkack 2y ago
        This is easy to refute. Take the commercial price of power for the location of manufacture and divide your retail price by that amount. The result will be the upper bound in MWh that could have possibly gone into the creation of that panel. Chinese solar panels cost less than 15 cents a watt. In the NW with residential prices at 10 cents per KWh, it takes 1500 hrs to break even. With 4hrs of "full sun" per day on average at PNW latitudes, about a year. This is just the panel not the system. The BS that panels take more energy to produce than they generate is disproven. https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/In-Stock-TRINA-Vertex-Solar-Cell_1600995276082.html?spm=a2700.galleryofferlist.p_offer.d_title.1308596fd9fgIx&s=p https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/In-Stock-TRINA-Vertex... The tariffs on solar are stupider than the Iraq war. If China can produce panels at 10 cents a watt wholesale, we should give them billions of dollars to make as many as they can. Train everyone in the military to install them.
    - nine_k 2y ago
      Energy-intensive is fine, as long as the energy is renewable. Smelting aluminum and silicon or mining aluminum and iron ores with electricity produced by solar and wind is ideal: else that energy of light and air motion would be wasted. Steel and concrete are harder to produce in an emission-free ways, but steel smelting in arc furnaces is very much a thing, and can be powered by renewables, at least partly.
    - blondie9x 2y ago
      A lot of misunderstanding about this comment. I think adding solar energy capacity to the energy supply mix is helpful. What I want to clarify is this, adding all energy supply has costs. Rare earth metals and other mining and habitat destruction that goes into increasing renewable supply needs to be considered. Like I said all additional energy supply has a cost. The real problem is we need to reduce consumption. We also need to rework our energy supply chains with renewables when appropriate as well as nuclear that isn't vulnerable to meltdowns.
  - redserk 2y ago
    It’s interesting seeing the difference in how solar is usually talked about versus backup generators. Whole-home generators are expensive and get used rarely but are often justified as a “just in case”. Solar doesn’t enjoy this kind of leniency, unfortunately. Being less dependent on the grid has many benefits that get ignored over a perceived return on value.
    - briHass 2y ago
      At least around here, backup generators are for outages that happen when solar would be mostly useless: heavy storms or during Winter. Cheap and safe batteries paired with solar will help, but the capacity will likely still be an issue for extended outages.
      - epistasis 2y ago
        An islanding solar system with storage is not useless during storms or the winter, it still generates during the day. Not sure where your "around here" is, though.
        nine_k 2y ago
        Do solar panels ever get trapped under large amounts of snow the day after a strong snow storm?
        timschmidt 2y ago
        Sure, but with a couple inches of snow on them, mine still generate power. And in areas which regularly receive snow, roof pitches are generally steep enough to encourage it to slide off else the building would suffer overloading. Worst case a push broom or squeegee with a very long handle works wonders. Also fairly trivial to rig up a resistive heating system for melting the snow in cases where the above isn't possible. Even possible to automate it based on time of day and expected power input.
        2y ago
  - epistasis 2y ago
    Once you add in the costs of additional transmission needed for utility scale solar, rooftop solar is extremely competitive. Especially as transmission capital costs start to skyrocket, and solar capital costs plummet. I have yet to see an economic argument in favor of utility scale solar over residential solar that takes into account the T&D upgrades necessary from utility scale solar.
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      We will need both, or at least something else, since not every building has a rooftop that can generate sufficient solar.
      - epistasis 2y ago
        Agreed. I think we will also start to see lots of industrial sites that have their own utility scale installs that don't even feed back into the grid, and are used directly, and coupled with thermal or chemical storage.
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    It's a testament to how inefficient "the system" is that rooftop solar is economical for a lot of people.
    - jameshart 2y ago
      Why? Sunlight falls everywhere. It’s not obvious to me that there should be efficiencies in capturing solar power centrally and then moving the energy over transmission lines. If you want one rooftop’s worth of electricity, you can either pay someone else for a rooftop’s worth of real estate and have them run solar panels on it, and transmit the power to you over wires, or you can put solar panels on the rooftop-sized area you already own at zero marginal land cost, and have the electricity already right where you want it. That that works out economically doesn’t seem like a surprise.
    - grecy 2y ago
      > It's a testament to how inefficient "the system" is that rooftop solar is economical for a lot of people. Solar panels are rapidly falling in price, and now I'm generating the power right where I'm using it - so no transmissions losses, no power transmission infrastructure, no transformers, no poles to replace when they get old, no lines to replace when trees fall on them, no trees to trim. No accounts to maintain, no billing, no credit card fees, no taxes. In fact, to get power to my house for the next ~30+ years requires absolutely zero labor from anybody. Of course it's economical, it would be baffling if it wasn't.
  - energy123 2y ago
    I'm surprised more conservatives in the West don't like it. It's the ultimate individual independence from the government and corporations. Individual sovereignty over your energy needs. Instead they want to rely on a foreign dictator and government-funded transmission lines. Bizarre.
    - mulmen 2y ago
      This isn’t an interesting line of thinking because it depends entirely on your definition of conservative. There’s nothing surprising (or interesting) about a straw man.
    - HPsquared 2y ago
      Same with EVs. You can generate your own electricity a hell of a lot easier than making your own gasoline.
      - wdh505 2y ago
        There are two attitudes that you skipped over: "dependability" and if it works, then don't fix it. Between those two and people who have tried an electric or hybrid vehicle and had it turn out poorly (totaled because the battery went bad in the heat and it isn't worth replacing). There is a degree of wisdom to the advice "chemical energy storage is more convenient, dependable, and cheap for intermittent to constant daily use". I look forward to on site residential solar powered propane production and liquification for this reason.
        mulmen 2y ago
        How will onsite propane work? Do you mean carbon capture? That would be great but isn’t it similar to flying cars where it’s not feasible around humans because you have to move a LOT of air?
        wdh505 2y ago
        1) it takes co2 from the air and water to produce propane hydrocarbons (mostly theory with some promising lab results) 2) not quite. Well, it is a form of carbon capture, but with the intent of releasing again soon. 3) 4% co2 is everywhere (open a window and turn on a fan and you have almost infinite). Water is everywhere humans are. I think it is a lot more an engineering problem than a feasibility problem
  - lobochrome 2y ago
    i think - when the grid goes down, your rooftop solar will go down too. Without grid generation there is nothing that can keep your inverters synchronized…
    - MaKey 2y ago
      There are inverters with a power outlet that can be used in case of a grid outage. Supplying your whole home with power when the grid goes down is possible too with the right hardware.
  - thelastgallon 2y ago
    It is probably cheaper or at least equivalent to utility scale, if we consider the cost of transmission and distribution, neither of which are needed with rooftop. Of course, it is grid tied, but it uses existing power lines to the home without requiring any new lines to be installed. And the indestructible resiliency of distributed power production from tens of millions of rooftops is unparalleled.
  - richie-guix 2y ago
    A 50KW battery is <$10,000. Sounds like he is allowed to sell excess back to the grid and payback period would be <20 years. They are warranted for longer. If financing is available it is basically free. ;) Big if that but more realistically the real kicker here is that all of that is about x3 larger than what most households need. I get that not everybody has $10k laying around to plop down on panels/batteries all in one go but if you do you can get off the grid now.
- Sytten 2y ago
  How expensive is the electricity in your area? I think here it is so cheap that might not be worth the installation cost (though that did drop a whole lot lately).
  - zdragnar 2y ago
    That's the trick. On one of the longest days of the year, OP got ~$5 worth of electricity where I live. The payoff can be long, and people often forget to account for the added cost to home insurance to cover the panels in that. OTOH, if where you live electricity is more expensive or labor is cheaper, it can be a really nice addition without too long a wait to make it back. The company I talked to said I get too much shade to be worth installing (150 foot tall trees near my house) so I'll be waiting awhile before I get mine even if electricity prices go up, sadly.
  - Retric 2y ago
    The ROI calculation can be a little tricky because solar can be a low risk leveraged investment with tax free returns. Remember money you don’t need to spend isn’t taxable. So for most home owners it’s easily worth it. While from a worker safety, economic, and even environmental standpoint rooftop solar is terrible compared to grid solar as an individual homeowner you can often get subsidies.
    - bumby 2y ago
      >So for most home owners it’s easily worth it. Can you elaborate on how you arrived at that conclusion? At least where I live, the math didn’t work out. It seemed like smarter conservation was a much better alternative. A couple portable/window A/C units that pay for themselves within a year or two made a heck of a lot more sense than $30k of solar on a roof already at half it’s life. Maybe when it’s time to replace my roof I’ll reconsider, but the payback didn’t seem there. (FWIW, I probably average < $100/mo in electricity.) I know conservation can go against human nature, but it sure seems like the better option for me.
      - Retric 2y ago
- sponaugle 2y ago
  That is awesome. I live in the PNW (Oregon,45°N) and the summers here are fantastic for solar power. I have a 20.2kW system on my roof and crank out 100-120 kWh a day in the summer months. I can store 42kWh, and push the rest back to the grid at full cost return.
  - sitkack 2y ago
    Thank you for saving our water!
  - kylehotchkiss 2y ago
    20kw on the roof is awesome! Do you have anything high load in your house or property or is it more just to sell back the excess to grid?
    - sponaugle 2y ago
      Well.... yea.... I do sort of have some high load... but not too much! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b3t37SIyBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b3t37SIyBs
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  Very exciting and satisfying! What’s the current break even date?
  - grecy 2y ago
    I'll need to see a whole 12 months of output before I can be sure. I suspect winter production will be well down, especially on heavy snow weeks (we get a lot here). Roughly, it looks like it will make about $1000 worth of power per year, and the price of power here is already locked in to go up between 5% and 12% per year, basically forever. I'm right on $8k out of pocket, which is on a 10 year interest free loan. So if I just put the savings from my old electricity bill into the loan, in 10 years it will be gone, and I'll just free power for 20 or so years after that. One day I'll build a garage, cover that in solar too, then get an EV so I don't have to ever buy gas again.
    - Waterluvian 2y ago
      That’s a phenomenal ROI if you’re in it for the long haul. Thanks for sharing the details.
      - grecy 2y ago
        And I'm in the rocky mountains in Canada, where basically everyone says "Solar will never work here". In my experience, solar works everywhere. TONS of friends in Alaska and Yukon have been off grid since ~2010.
        Waterluvian 2y ago
        My MSc research at UWaterloo involved mapping photovoltaic viability in Canada. The data was somewhat uninteresting because the conclusion was: pretty much everywhere.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      Where do you get a 10 year interest-free loan for solar?
- lttlrck 2y ago
  Ooh that's pretty good at 49.5° 49.7kWh in San Diego yesterday. We take a hit from the from the prevailing temperatures in the Summer. Peak this year so far was 53kWh back in May.
foxhop 2y ago
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einpoklum 2y ago
Despite the upbeat title, we need to remember that we are well past time to stop emitting large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. And yet, solar, wind, storage discharge, other renewables( and possibly SMR nuclear temporarily) are not even _close_ to replacing fossil fuel energy sources. The charts do not suggest reaching anywhere near zero emissions from electricity generation by 2030, and that's when we ignore the contribution of the production of solar panels and related systems. So, while the trend is positive - this is still disappointing and worrying news.
- oezi 2y ago
  We want to get to net zero by 2050 not 2030. At the current growth of 2-3% per year plus some acceleration we might get there.
  - chippiewill 2y ago
    We want to get to net zero by 2020, not 2030 or 2050, we just say 2050 because it's way too late to do 2030, let alone 2020
    - michpoch 2y ago
      If you plan to hyperbole it, then say 1990. The plan is 2050.
  - energy123 2y ago
    That's the power sector which is less than half of emissions, and it's the most easily addressable part of the problem. We need to be accelerating faster somehow. China has the manufacturing capacity but is struggling to sell panels at the clip it can make them.
- Retric 2y ago
  IMO it is close. ~40% of the world’s electricity is from low carbon sources like solar, and that number is already increasing by over 1.5% per year and accelerating. People get concerned about 100% carbon free, but really once you hit 90+% the specific year you hit zero becomes less relevant. Spending 1 more year at 50% is worse than 5 years under 10% or 50 years under 1%. If anything it’s EV’s we should be worried about not electricity. Cars last a long time so every ICE sold today is ~26 years of pollution locked in.
ThinkingGuy 2y ago
Summer solstice* *In the northern hemisphere
- Retric 2y ago
  Yep 20% of global Global power when Australian solar is dealing with the shortest day of the year and near the equator it’s just a normal day. Though obviously the northern hemisphere has a disproportionate percentage of total solar installs.
  - porphyra 2y ago
    Australia's continued reliance on coal when they have one of the most abundant insolation is a global embarrassment.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- stevage 2y ago
  Definitely confusing for me. I just went to two winter solstice parties.
walrushunter 2y ago
That's pretty bad for the northern hemisphere's solstice. It should be way higher than that.
photochemsyn 2y ago
This is a nice marketing article, and while I completely support the transition off fossil fuels and onto renewables, I don't think it's the right approach - it's better to be upfront about the challenges involved in feeding intermittent energy streams into an electricity grid where demand is not aligned closely with primary production, neither on a daily nor a seasonal basis. The authors of this kind of thing should take a cue from the financial reporting on the 2008 economic crash and films like the Big Short - people can handle complexity, they're interested in hearing about default credit swaps and CDOs and the internal mechanisms of complex financial instruments - so they can certainly handle somewhat difficult energy concepts. Thus, you can tell people that if you want to run 24/7 on solar inputs alone, then at peak noon you might need your solar system to be producing twice as much power as demand is drawing from the grid, so that the rest can be diverted to storage for use in the evening and morning. If you want to get through a cold wet northern hemisphere December, then you'll need even more solar to divert to chemical fuel storage of some kind for that time period.
- jebarker 2y ago
  I don't really understand your complaint. All the issues you raise are true, but there's nothing factually incorrect in the article is there?
  - photochemsyn 2y ago
    It's not a complaint, just a suggestion that articles like this include a paragraph explaining the 24-7 power generation issue, instead of just the optimal output under ideal conditions. In terms of the organization behind it (ember-climate) it leads one to suspect they have more marketers than engineers on staff, which (depending on audience, I suppose) is somewhat poor marketing.
- rainsford 2y ago
  I sort of get the complaint about matching production and usage, but it seems worth pointing out that in climates that encourage air conditioning, peak solar output and peak air conditioning usage are reasonably well matched. That's not a 24/7 solution of course, but it's substantial progress all the same.
jmyeet 2y ago
Critics of solar (ie pro-nuclear people) like to point out that solar paower is variable and can't be used for base load. The truth seems to be more complicated [1] eg: > Interestingly, as it looks to the future, NextEra seems not to be particularly interested in thermal power plants, the type that includes base load plants. It is planning to close its last coal-burning plant in 2028. And it expects electricity generated by natural gas to decline to 18% overall for all US producers by 2035. A look at a graphic on page 122 shows us why. Another factor here is that solar power generation (ie when the Sun is up) largely aligns with peak power usage [2] so you're actually reducing the base load required because the maximum power usage has decreased with a significant solar power deployment. Lastly, we don't tend to build power plants next to people. People don't want to live next to power plants. The further users are away from a power plant the more power required because you lose power in transmission. Solar (with or without batteries) can be deployed on residential housing so a wide solar deployment has power generation closer to the user (and is thus more efficient) but also reduces the need for heavy transmission lines. That's important because if and when we have wider EV usage, there's going to be an issue in having sufficient power generation and transmission capacity so you really need solar to offset that. [1]: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/28/we-dont-need-base-load-power/ https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/28/we-dont-need-base-load-... [2]: https://paylesspower.com/blog/what-are-peak-hours-for-electricity/ https://paylesspower.com/blog/what-are-peak-hours-for-electr...
- JoshTriplett 2y ago
  > Critics of solar (ie pro-nuclear people) Please don't assume that everyone who is pro-nuclear is anti-solar. Let's have nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, tide-based, and anything else that works as a viable power source with no pollution. Let's have all of those technologies compete fairly over what is the most efficient and most capable of handling the load.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    To add some numbers to that: peak winter heating load in my house is about double the peak summer cooling load. And I'm in Maryland--not a cold climate at all.
throwaway984393 2y ago
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datahack 2y ago
It’s almost like renewable energy was suppressed for years and now that we have it somehow it actually works?!? What?
- sumedh 2y ago
  > It’s almost like renewable energy was suppressed for years Who suppressed it?
  - porphyra 2y ago
    The fossil fuel industry is well known for lobbying and trying all sorts of underhanded tactics to give themselves subsidies and undermine renewables.
    - DavidPiper 2y ago
      Especially here in Australia, where we happen to (still) be the world's largest coal exporter.
      - doctor_eval 2y ago
        Yes, and apparently we will soon be the world’s largest user of small modular reactors*. I can’t wait. * nonsense Australian opposition talking point intended only to extend the life of fossil fuels in this country. https://reneweconomy.com.au/duttons-plan-to-nuke-australias-renewable-energy-transition-explained-in-full/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/duttons-plan-to-nuke-australias-...
        DavidPiper 2y ago
        I'm not at all across the Nuclear Energy political discourse, though I understand it's a uh... hot topic here. The article you linked is about what I would expect from both sides. Theoretically I'm not against nuclear power. It's miles better than coal and oil, and Reactor design and safety has come a long way. France is a great example of a country who has made it work. However. It kind of seems unnecessary at this point. Solar and wind are cheaper, and already have industries in hockey-stick growth - including Lithium which Australia is also getting better at (locally and with Australian-owned companies abroad). Australia's key strength has always[1] been digging stuff out of the ground, and we still get to do that in a renewable future. Solar and wind also don't have black swan risks like nuclear - regardless of how much safer its become - and they're distributed, with fault tolerance / buffers built in by batteries. I assume the Libs' nuclear plan does not include building a ton of batteries to address those issues. I feel like we've just leapfrogged Nuclear as a useful solution, similar to the way many developing countries will be able to leapfrog entire industrial revolutions once clean energy is ubiquitous. Investing in nucalear at this point would literally be going backwards. [1] "Dale dug a hole"
api 2y ago
This is absolutely unreal progress. Twenty years ago people argued that this was impossible or at least could never be done economically.
- namaria 2y ago
  Yes it has been amazing seeing the economics change in real time. And I also love the fact that photosynthesizing ecosystems are going full circle now. Earth has evolved sun eating lifeforms and now these lifeforms are at last developing a sun eating civilization. All debate is mooted, the momentum is there and the economics work. We will all be energy rich in a couple of decades! It will surely help mitigate the impacts from all the carbon we've emitted so far.
  - api 2y ago
    Even better our solar panels actually beat photosynthesis for conversion efficiency by at least 2X or sometimes more (depending on the plant you are comparing against). This is also a big reason that biofuels are a bad idea, other than that they compete with farmland and natural land.
    - namaria 2y ago
      Good point. Biofuels were clearly a bad idea from any angle other than political virtual signaling. Rudimentary energy accounting was sufficient to show it's basically greenwashing the oil sunk into the process rather than harnessing the sun.
neals 2y ago
And then, the Netherlands just killed off an ecosystem of installation and service of solar, crafted by 2 decades of subsidies. In just 2 months. Such a waste.
- stephenitis 2y ago
  Can you elaborate?
  - wcoenen 2y ago
    There is a lot of drama currently in the Netherlands about the end of net metering.
    - bufferoverflow 2y ago
      Net metering is great for the customers, but then your electricity provider becomes an equivalent of a giant battery. A batteries are very expensive still. We have solar on our house, and we enjoy net metering, but I understand the arguments against it.
- youngtaff 2y ago
  UK did the same about 10 years ago and it’s cost us billions in extra energy costs since
  - bufferoverflow 2y ago
    Somebody has to pay for all that energy storage. And that somebody is always the customer.
Hobadee 2y ago
And tonight, it will generate 0%. Solar without batteries should be illegal; we are just creating a massive problem and doubling down on non-renewables. (Coal, gas, and nuclear plants can't shut down and start up that quickly.) Of course, batteries have their own massive ecological issues to worry about.
- ta988 2y ago
  No because a lot of loads can be made to run only when solar is present, so you just suck out excess power when it is there.
  - Hobadee 2y ago
    Please explain how you just "make" loads run only when solar is present? A quick look at California's "Duck Curve" shows that isn't likely, and reinforces my original point. AC during the day is a major draw, but the second major draw is in the evenings when people get home from work and start doing things. Solar is okay during the summer when the sun is still out (albeit low on the horizon so many arrays have reduced output) but during the winter it's dark before you even get home.
    - ta988 2y ago
      Aluminum smelting, data processing, water treatment and pumping, mining... A lot of industries don't need a 100% duty cycle and would be hally to switch to scheduling if cost incentives are here (and some already do like aluminum smelting in some areas).
- thebruce87m 2y ago
  > And tonight, it will generate 0%. This is a bold claim. Can I see your source that global solar will fall to 0% generation at any point in the next 24 hours?
MichaelNolan 2y ago
Most people, and most politicians, don’t realize it yet. But by the 2030s solar will be the largest source of electricity in the world. By the 2040s it will be the largest source of energy in the world. It’s going to change the world in ways we don’t yet understand. And nothing can stop this change. The price of solar and batteries will be lower than every other alternative.
- atlintots 2y ago
  As God intended
- brtkdotse 2y ago
  That’s comforting in some sense. Got a link or a graph I can use to propagate these news?
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    The recent Rocky Mountain Institute report focuses on the exponentials with some nice graphs: https://rmi.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2024/06/RMI-Cleantech-Revolution-pdf.pdf https://rmi.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2024/06/RMI-C... A blog post covering it, from recent Royal Statistical Society honorary fellow, Hannah Ritchie: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/cleantech-revolution https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/cleantech-revoluti...
    - h0l0cube 2y ago
      Big fan of Hannah Ritchie's analyses, but I do feel like that PDF is a little over optimistic with both future and allegedly recent peaks for fossil fuel consumption. That said, I retrieved a bunch of a bunch of historical data from OWID, and with some cheap regression analysis in Desmos, I compiled this mindmelting graph https://www.desmos.com/calculator/lunahw7gvo https://www.desmos.com/calculator/lunahw7gvo Basically the energy singularity happens in 2034, where wind daily generation + solar daily consumption — which is disturbingly superlinear — eclipses the global energy consumption trend — which is disturbingly linear — and then worldwide storage, which is growing at an even more absurd pace, exceeds solar and wind the following year. And then 4 years after that we have 10 days of worldwide storage. All the while appliances are becoming more efficient. Perhaps AI, VR, and transport electification will soak up the excess, but we've yet to see even crypto make a noticeable bump in global energy consumption above trend, just glancing at the data. Edit: I couldn't get good data on energy storage, so I used 'added capacity' from here and also a quote from the same site that implies there was 173Gwh capacity in 2021: > Global installed storage capacity is forecast to expand by 56% in the next five years to reach over 270 GW by 2026. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/annual-grid-scale-battery-storage-additions-2017-2022 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/annual-grid-s... https://www.iea.org/articles/how-rapidly-will-the-global-electricity-storage-market-grow-by-2026 https://www.iea.org/articles/how-rapidly-will-the-global-ele... All other data was Twh worldwide from OWID datasets multiplied by 1000/365 to determine average daily usage in Gwh.
DavidPiper 2y ago
In Australia, I'm very optimistic about Suncable[1], I just wish they were able to move faster (I do get that national coordination is slow, and that it's an enormous project). Also did a back-of-the-envelope calculation the other day. It would cost roughly $175 billion to add solar panels and a battery to every residential dwelling in Australia (commercially priced and assuming available supply). That's a ton of money, but there are also individual people in the world that could afford that bill and change Australia, and the global power network, forever. [1] https://www.suncable.energy/ https://www.suncable.energy/
- jgord 2y ago
  Would it not be more efficient to put solar on every bunnings/warehouse/mall rooftop and over parking lots .. rather than on home rooftops ?
  - DavidPiper 2y ago
    Quite probably, but I only thought to look up the stats for residential dwellings, and price data was easily available. (I love solar parking lots in particular because it makes double use of the space with zero downside, plus I no longer burn my hands on the steering wheel after going shopping on a 44℃ day.)
kumarvvr 2y ago
My home in India, has a 3 kW system. Generates 30 kWh on sunny days and 20 kWh on the cloudiest days. My hone consumption is about 15 kWh a day. Costed me about 4000 USD.
- lawrenceyan 2y ago
  Decentralization in action, very cool!
- kumarvvr 2y ago
  Edit : Its a 5 kW system.
kumarvvr 2y ago
We ought to bring in systems and processes in place, to match peak power generation with peak power usage. Samrt home equipment can play a huge role in that.
averageRoyalty 2y ago
Weird thing to say, given summer solstice is 6 months away and winter solstice just happened.

148 points by dotcoma 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

I did my part. I just wrapped up installing a 7.3kW system on my roof at 49.5°N. Yesterday was the highest day of output so far, 50.17 kWh I'm extremely happy and can't stop checking the app. Our first bill just came in, -$57.

stavros 2y ago
I really like rooftop solar, as an idea. It might not be the cheapest way to generate electricity, but it's good to know you aren't as dependent on the grid. It's like having your own vegetable garden. Hopefully, with advances in battery technology, homes can become completely independent of the grid.
- blondie9x 2y ago
  I wish it was this simple. All energy is still borrowed. Mining and producing and disposing of solar panels is still very energy intensive. Renewable energy is a piece of what needs to be a much larger effort to fight climate change.
  - stavros 2y ago
    Sure, it's energy intensive, but if that energy comes from the sun, who cares? I don't understand we keep using "energy intensive" as a euphemism for "emits carbon". The two aren't synonymous. Energy-intensive processes aren't a problem at all, the problem is dirty energy generation processes. Fix your energy generation, and there's no problem.
    - cogman10 2y ago
      There's a (diminishing) correlation that shouldn't be ignored. I'm not saying we should abandon solar because of that correlation but it should at least be factored in. For example, I think it's a dumb idea to turn every road into a "solar road" just because "who cares".
      - stavros 2y ago
        I was replying to a specific argument: That producing solar panels is energy-intensive, and thus bad (this part was implied). My counterargument is that energy-intensive is irrelevant when you've got basically-free, clean energy. If your energy is dirty, fix your energy. Don't make downstream consumers feel bad instead.
        cogman10 2y ago
        I don't disagree, just taking the conversation a slightly different direction as I think you'll agree that the "it takes energy to make renewables" argument is generally made in bad faith. I think there is irresponsible consumption of solar panels, particularly when it's done more as a performative action rather than actually producing power to be used.
        mlyle 2y ago
        Yah. I am glad we are deemphasizing residential solar. Utility-scale solar has better capacity factors and installation economics. I think it's going to be barely possible to keep our current quality of life and reach a low-CO2 economy. We have limited resources, and even if a residential solar panel "pays back" its energy in 2.5 years, we are better off putting it in a desert where it will pay back that energy in a year.
        mulmen 2y ago
        What about the economies of scale? Does/did residential solar create enough demand to ramp up utility scale production?
  - dgacmu 2y ago
    Yes, you have to analyze the embodied energy, but solar panels are energy positive within 1-2 years these days: https://www.quora.com/How-much-more-energy-do-solar-panels-produce-in-their-lifetime-than-is-used-to-make-them-How-does-this-energy-return-on-energy-investment-compare-with-other-technologies https://www.quora.com/How-much-more-energy-do-solar-panels-p... It's really a no-brainer up to a certain amount of your grid mix (and that amount can be quite high).
  - cogman10 2y ago
    This is an old trope that's not longer accurate pretty much across the board for renewables/batteries. Also.. Mining for solar panels has never been the major energy cost. Solar panels are primarily silicon (re: sand). The actual energy expensive part for them is/was melting the sand into glass. Even the next major element, aluminum for the brackets, accounts for far more energy expenditure than the mining of the doping agents. Even for windmills, the major energy cost isn't mining, it's the smelting the steel for the tower. Renewable energy is a piece of the puzzle and not everything. It's a major and important piece. Switching the grid away from fossil fuels accounts for a huge portion of emissions and renewables are some of the fastest and cheapest to deploy solutions currently.
  - mrshadowgoose 2y ago
    It is that simple. "Energy intensive" is irrelevant. On average, a solar panel will capture more energy in its lifetime than the amount used to create and eventually recycle it. So please stop repeating that useless whine.
    - sitkack 2y ago
      This is easy to refute. Take the commercial price of power for the location of manufacture and divide your retail price by that amount. The result will be the upper bound in MWh that could have possibly gone into the creation of that panel. Chinese solar panels cost less than 15 cents a watt. In the NW with residential prices at 10 cents per KWh, it takes 1500 hrs to break even. With 4hrs of "full sun" per day on average at PNW latitudes, about a year. This is just the panel not the system. The BS that panels take more energy to produce than they generate is disproven. https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/In-Stock-TRINA-Vertex-Solar-Cell_1600995276082.html?spm=a2700.galleryofferlist.p_offer.d_title.1308596fd9fgIx&s=p https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/In-Stock-TRINA-Vertex... The tariffs on solar are stupider than the Iraq war. If China can produce panels at 10 cents a watt wholesale, we should give them billions of dollars to make as many as they can. Train everyone in the military to install them.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Energy-intensive is fine, as long as the energy is renewable. Smelting aluminum and silicon or mining aluminum and iron ores with electricity produced by solar and wind is ideal: else that energy of light and air motion would be wasted. Steel and concrete are harder to produce in an emission-free ways, but steel smelting in arc furnaces is very much a thing, and can be powered by renewables, at least partly.
  - blondie9x 2y ago
    A lot of misunderstanding about this comment. I think adding solar energy capacity to the energy supply mix is helpful. What I want to clarify is this, adding all energy supply has costs. Rare earth metals and other mining and habitat destruction that goes into increasing renewable supply needs to be considered. Like I said all additional energy supply has a cost. The real problem is we need to reduce consumption. We also need to rework our energy supply chains with renewables when appropriate as well as nuclear that isn't vulnerable to meltdowns.
- redserk 2y ago
  It’s interesting seeing the difference in how solar is usually talked about versus backup generators. Whole-home generators are expensive and get used rarely but are often justified as a “just in case”. Solar doesn’t enjoy this kind of leniency, unfortunately. Being less dependent on the grid has many benefits that get ignored over a perceived return on value.
  - briHass 2y ago
    At least around here, backup generators are for outages that happen when solar would be mostly useless: heavy storms or during Winter. Cheap and safe batteries paired with solar will help, but the capacity will likely still be an issue for extended outages.
    - epistasis 2y ago
      An islanding solar system with storage is not useless during storms or the winter, it still generates during the day. Not sure where your "around here" is, though.
      - nine_k 2y ago
        Do solar panels ever get trapped under large amounts of snow the day after a strong snow storm?
        timschmidt 2y ago
        Sure, but with a couple inches of snow on them, mine still generate power. And in areas which regularly receive snow, roof pitches are generally steep enough to encourage it to slide off else the building would suffer overloading. Worst case a push broom or squeegee with a very long handle works wonders. Also fairly trivial to rig up a resistive heating system for melting the snow in cases where the above isn't possible. Even possible to automate it based on time of day and expected power input.
        2y ago
- epistasis 2y ago
  Once you add in the costs of additional transmission needed for utility scale solar, rooftop solar is extremely competitive. Especially as transmission capital costs start to skyrocket, and solar capital costs plummet. I have yet to see an economic argument in favor of utility scale solar over residential solar that takes into account the T&D upgrades necessary from utility scale solar.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    We will need both, or at least something else, since not every building has a rooftop that can generate sufficient solar.
    - epistasis 2y ago
      Agreed. I think we will also start to see lots of industrial sites that have their own utility scale installs that don't even feed back into the grid, and are used directly, and coupled with thermal or chemical storage.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  It's a testament to how inefficient "the system" is that rooftop solar is economical for a lot of people.
  - jameshart 2y ago
    Why? Sunlight falls everywhere. It’s not obvious to me that there should be efficiencies in capturing solar power centrally and then moving the energy over transmission lines. If you want one rooftop’s worth of electricity, you can either pay someone else for a rooftop’s worth of real estate and have them run solar panels on it, and transmit the power to you over wires, or you can put solar panels on the rooftop-sized area you already own at zero marginal land cost, and have the electricity already right where you want it. That that works out economically doesn’t seem like a surprise.
  - grecy 2y ago
    > It's a testament to how inefficient "the system" is that rooftop solar is economical for a lot of people. Solar panels are rapidly falling in price, and now I'm generating the power right where I'm using it - so no transmissions losses, no power transmission infrastructure, no transformers, no poles to replace when they get old, no lines to replace when trees fall on them, no trees to trim. No accounts to maintain, no billing, no credit card fees, no taxes. In fact, to get power to my house for the next ~30+ years requires absolutely zero labor from anybody. Of course it's economical, it would be baffling if it wasn't.
- energy123 2y ago
  I'm surprised more conservatives in the West don't like it. It's the ultimate individual independence from the government and corporations. Individual sovereignty over your energy needs. Instead they want to rely on a foreign dictator and government-funded transmission lines. Bizarre.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    This isn’t an interesting line of thinking because it depends entirely on your definition of conservative. There’s nothing surprising (or interesting) about a straw man.
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    Same with EVs. You can generate your own electricity a hell of a lot easier than making your own gasoline.
    - wdh505 2y ago
      There are two attitudes that you skipped over: "dependability" and if it works, then don't fix it. Between those two and people who have tried an electric or hybrid vehicle and had it turn out poorly (totaled because the battery went bad in the heat and it isn't worth replacing). There is a degree of wisdom to the advice "chemical energy storage is more convenient, dependable, and cheap for intermittent to constant daily use". I look forward to on site residential solar powered propane production and liquification for this reason.
      - mulmen 2y ago
        How will onsite propane work? Do you mean carbon capture? That would be great but isn’t it similar to flying cars where it’s not feasible around humans because you have to move a LOT of air?
        wdh505 2y ago
        1) it takes co2 from the air and water to produce propane hydrocarbons (mostly theory with some promising lab results) 2) not quite. Well, it is a form of carbon capture, but with the intent of releasing again soon. 3) 4% co2 is everywhere (open a window and turn on a fan and you have almost infinite). Water is everywhere humans are. I think it is a lot more an engineering problem than a feasibility problem
- lobochrome 2y ago
  i think - when the grid goes down, your rooftop solar will go down too. Without grid generation there is nothing that can keep your inverters synchronized…
  - MaKey 2y ago
    There are inverters with a power outlet that can be used in case of a grid outage. Supplying your whole home with power when the grid goes down is possible too with the right hardware.
- thelastgallon 2y ago
  It is probably cheaper or at least equivalent to utility scale, if we consider the cost of transmission and distribution, neither of which are needed with rooftop. Of course, it is grid tied, but it uses existing power lines to the home without requiring any new lines to be installed. And the indestructible resiliency of distributed power production from tens of millions of rooftops is unparalleled.
- richie-guix 2y ago
  A 50KW battery is <$10,000. Sounds like he is allowed to sell excess back to the grid and payback period would be <20 years. They are warranted for longer. If financing is available it is basically free. ;) Big if that but more realistically the real kicker here is that all of that is about x3 larger than what most households need. I get that not everybody has $10k laying around to plop down on panels/batteries all in one go but if you do you can get off the grid now.
Sytten 2y ago
How expensive is the electricity in your area? I think here it is so cheap that might not be worth the installation cost (though that did drop a whole lot lately).
- zdragnar 2y ago
  That's the trick. On one of the longest days of the year, OP got ~$5 worth of electricity where I live. The payoff can be long, and people often forget to account for the added cost to home insurance to cover the panels in that. OTOH, if where you live electricity is more expensive or labor is cheaper, it can be a really nice addition without too long a wait to make it back. The company I talked to said I get too much shade to be worth installing (150 foot tall trees near my house) so I'll be waiting awhile before I get mine even if electricity prices go up, sadly.
- Retric 2y ago
  The ROI calculation can be a little tricky because solar can be a low risk leveraged investment with tax free returns. Remember money you don’t need to spend isn’t taxable. So for most home owners it’s easily worth it. While from a worker safety, economic, and even environmental standpoint rooftop solar is terrible compared to grid solar as an individual homeowner you can often get subsidies.
  - bumby 2y ago
    >So for most home owners it’s easily worth it. Can you elaborate on how you arrived at that conclusion? At least where I live, the math didn’t work out. It seemed like smarter conservation was a much better alternative. A couple portable/window A/C units that pay for themselves within a year or two made a heck of a lot more sense than $30k of solar on a roof already at half it’s life. Maybe when it’s time to replace my roof I’ll reconsider, but the payback didn’t seem there. (FWIW, I probably average < $100/mo in electricity.) I know conservation can go against human nature, but it sure seems like the better option for me.
    - Retric 2y ago
sponaugle 2y ago
That is awesome. I live in the PNW (Oregon,45°N) and the summers here are fantastic for solar power. I have a 20.2kW system on my roof and crank out 100-120 kWh a day in the summer months. I can store 42kWh, and push the rest back to the grid at full cost return.
- sitkack 2y ago
  Thank you for saving our water!
- kylehotchkiss 2y ago
  20kw on the roof is awesome! Do you have anything high load in your house or property or is it more just to sell back the excess to grid?
  - sponaugle 2y ago
    Well.... yea.... I do sort of have some high load... but not too much! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b3t37SIyBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b3t37SIyBs
Waterluvian 2y ago
Very exciting and satisfying! What’s the current break even date?
- grecy 2y ago
  I'll need to see a whole 12 months of output before I can be sure. I suspect winter production will be well down, especially on heavy snow weeks (we get a lot here). Roughly, it looks like it will make about $1000 worth of power per year, and the price of power here is already locked in to go up between 5% and 12% per year, basically forever. I'm right on $8k out of pocket, which is on a 10 year interest free loan. So if I just put the savings from my old electricity bill into the loan, in 10 years it will be gone, and I'll just free power for 20 or so years after that. One day I'll build a garage, cover that in solar too, then get an EV so I don't have to ever buy gas again.
  - Waterluvian 2y ago
    That’s a phenomenal ROI if you’re in it for the long haul. Thanks for sharing the details.
    - grecy 2y ago
      And I'm in the rocky mountains in Canada, where basically everyone says "Solar will never work here". In my experience, solar works everywhere. TONS of friends in Alaska and Yukon have been off grid since ~2010.
      - Waterluvian 2y ago
        My MSc research at UWaterloo involved mapping photovoltaic viability in Canada. The data was somewhat uninteresting because the conclusion was: pretty much everywhere.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    Where do you get a 10 year interest-free loan for solar?
lttlrck 2y ago
Ooh that's pretty good at 49.5° 49.7kWh in San Diego yesterday. We take a hit from the from the prevailing temperatures in the Summer. Peak this year so far was 53kWh back in May.

foxhop 2y ago

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einpoklum 2y ago

Despite the upbeat title, we need to remember that we are well past time to stop emitting large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. And yet, solar, wind, storage discharge, other renewables( and possibly SMR nuclear temporarily) are not even _close_ to replacing fossil fuel energy sources. The charts do not suggest reaching anywhere near zero emissions from electricity generation by 2030, and that's when we ignore the contribution of the production of solar panels and related systems. So, while the trend is positive - this is still disappointing and worrying news.

oezi 2y ago
We want to get to net zero by 2050 not 2030. At the current growth of 2-3% per year plus some acceleration we might get there.
- chippiewill 2y ago
  We want to get to net zero by 2020, not 2030 or 2050, we just say 2050 because it's way too late to do 2030, let alone 2020
  - michpoch 2y ago
    If you plan to hyperbole it, then say 1990. The plan is 2050.
- energy123 2y ago
  That's the power sector which is less than half of emissions, and it's the most easily addressable part of the problem. We need to be accelerating faster somehow. China has the manufacturing capacity but is struggling to sell panels at the clip it can make them.
Retric 2y ago
IMO it is close. ~40% of the world’s electricity is from low carbon sources like solar, and that number is already increasing by over 1.5% per year and accelerating. People get concerned about 100% carbon free, but really once you hit 90+% the specific year you hit zero becomes less relevant. Spending 1 more year at 50% is worse than 5 years under 10% or 50 years under 1%. If anything it’s EV’s we should be worried about not electricity. Cars last a long time so every ICE sold today is ~26 years of pollution locked in.

ThinkingGuy 2y ago

Summer solstice* *In the northern hemisphere

Retric 2y ago
Yep 20% of global Global power when Australian solar is dealing with the shortest day of the year and near the equator it’s just a normal day. Though obviously the northern hemisphere has a disproportionate percentage of total solar installs.
- porphyra 2y ago
  Australia's continued reliance on coal when they have one of the most abundant insolation is a global embarrassment.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
stevage 2y ago
Definitely confusing for me. I just went to two winter solstice parties.

walrushunter 2y ago

That's pretty bad for the northern hemisphere's solstice. It should be way higher than that.

photochemsyn 2y ago

This is a nice marketing article, and while I completely support the transition off fossil fuels and onto renewables, I don't think it's the right approach - it's better to be upfront about the challenges involved in feeding intermittent energy streams into an electricity grid where demand is not aligned closely with primary production, neither on a daily nor a seasonal basis. The authors of this kind of thing should take a cue from the financial reporting on the 2008 economic crash and films like the Big Short - people can handle complexity, they're interested in hearing about default credit swaps and CDOs and the internal mechanisms of complex financial instruments - so they can certainly handle somewhat difficult energy concepts. Thus, you can tell people that if you want to run 24/7 on solar inputs alone, then at peak noon you might need your solar system to be producing twice as much power as demand is drawing from the grid, so that the rest can be diverted to storage for use in the evening and morning. If you want to get through a cold wet northern hemisphere December, then you'll need even more solar to divert to chemical fuel storage of some kind for that time period.

jebarker 2y ago
I don't really understand your complaint. All the issues you raise are true, but there's nothing factually incorrect in the article is there?
- photochemsyn 2y ago
  It's not a complaint, just a suggestion that articles like this include a paragraph explaining the 24-7 power generation issue, instead of just the optimal output under ideal conditions. In terms of the organization behind it (ember-climate) it leads one to suspect they have more marketers than engineers on staff, which (depending on audience, I suppose) is somewhat poor marketing.
rainsford 2y ago
I sort of get the complaint about matching production and usage, but it seems worth pointing out that in climates that encourage air conditioning, peak solar output and peak air conditioning usage are reasonably well matched. That's not a 24/7 solution of course, but it's substantial progress all the same.

jmyeet 2y ago

Critics of solar (ie pro-nuclear people) like to point out that solar paower is variable and can't be used for base load. The truth seems to be more complicated [1] eg: > Interestingly, as it looks to the future, NextEra seems not to be particularly interested in thermal power plants, the type that includes base load plants. It is planning to close its last coal-burning plant in 2028. And it expects electricity generated by natural gas to decline to 18% overall for all US producers by 2035. A look at a graphic on page 122 shows us why. Another factor here is that solar power generation (ie when the Sun is up) largely aligns with peak power usage [2] so you're actually reducing the base load required because the maximum power usage has decreased with a significant solar power deployment. Lastly, we don't tend to build power plants next to people. People don't want to live next to power plants. The further users are away from a power plant the more power required because you lose power in transmission. Solar (with or without batteries) can be deployed on residential housing so a wide solar deployment has power generation closer to the user (and is thus more efficient) but also reduces the need for heavy transmission lines. That's important because if and when we have wider EV usage, there's going to be an issue in having sufficient power generation and transmission capacity so you really need solar to offset that. [1]: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/28/we-dont-need-base-load-power/ https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/28/we-dont-need-base-load-... [2]: https://paylesspower.com/blog/what-are-peak-hours-for-electricity/ https://paylesspower.com/blog/what-are-peak-hours-for-electr...

JoshTriplett 2y ago
> Critics of solar (ie pro-nuclear people) Please don't assume that everyone who is pro-nuclear is anti-solar. Let's have nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, tide-based, and anything else that works as a viable power source with no pollution. Let's have all of those technologies compete fairly over what is the most efficient and most capable of handling the load.
- rayiner 2y ago
  To add some numbers to that: peak winter heating load in my house is about double the peak summer cooling load. And I'm in Maryland--not a cold climate at all.

throwaway984393 2y ago

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datahack 2y ago

It’s almost like renewable energy was suppressed for years and now that we have it somehow it actually works?!? What?

sumedh 2y ago
> It’s almost like renewable energy was suppressed for years Who suppressed it?
- porphyra 2y ago
  The fossil fuel industry is well known for lobbying and trying all sorts of underhanded tactics to give themselves subsidies and undermine renewables.
  - DavidPiper 2y ago
    Especially here in Australia, where we happen to (still) be the world's largest coal exporter.
    - doctor_eval 2y ago
      Yes, and apparently we will soon be the world’s largest user of small modular reactors*. I can’t wait. * nonsense Australian opposition talking point intended only to extend the life of fossil fuels in this country. https://reneweconomy.com.au/duttons-plan-to-nuke-australias-renewable-energy-transition-explained-in-full/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/duttons-plan-to-nuke-australias-...
      - DavidPiper 2y ago
        I'm not at all across the Nuclear Energy political discourse, though I understand it's a uh... hot topic here. The article you linked is about what I would expect from both sides. Theoretically I'm not against nuclear power. It's miles better than coal and oil, and Reactor design and safety has come a long way. France is a great example of a country who has made it work. However. It kind of seems unnecessary at this point. Solar and wind are cheaper, and already have industries in hockey-stick growth - including Lithium which Australia is also getting better at (locally and with Australian-owned companies abroad). Australia's key strength has always[1] been digging stuff out of the ground, and we still get to do that in a renewable future. Solar and wind also don't have black swan risks like nuclear - regardless of how much safer its become - and they're distributed, with fault tolerance / buffers built in by batteries. I assume the Libs' nuclear plan does not include building a ton of batteries to address those issues. I feel like we've just leapfrogged Nuclear as a useful solution, similar to the way many developing countries will be able to leapfrog entire industrial revolutions once clean energy is ubiquitous. Investing in nucalear at this point would literally be going backwards. [1] "Dale dug a hole"

api 2y ago

This is absolutely unreal progress. Twenty years ago people argued that this was impossible or at least could never be done economically.

namaria 2y ago
Yes it has been amazing seeing the economics change in real time. And I also love the fact that photosynthesizing ecosystems are going full circle now. Earth has evolved sun eating lifeforms and now these lifeforms are at last developing a sun eating civilization. All debate is mooted, the momentum is there and the economics work. We will all be energy rich in a couple of decades! It will surely help mitigate the impacts from all the carbon we've emitted so far.
- api 2y ago
  Even better our solar panels actually beat photosynthesis for conversion efficiency by at least 2X or sometimes more (depending on the plant you are comparing against). This is also a big reason that biofuels are a bad idea, other than that they compete with farmland and natural land.
  - namaria 2y ago
    Good point. Biofuels were clearly a bad idea from any angle other than political virtual signaling. Rudimentary energy accounting was sufficient to show it's basically greenwashing the oil sunk into the process rather than harnessing the sun.

neals 2y ago

And then, the Netherlands just killed off an ecosystem of installation and service of solar, crafted by 2 decades of subsidies. In just 2 months. Such a waste.

stephenitis 2y ago
Can you elaborate?
- wcoenen 2y ago
  There is a lot of drama currently in the Netherlands about the end of net metering.
  - bufferoverflow 2y ago
    Net metering is great for the customers, but then your electricity provider becomes an equivalent of a giant battery. A batteries are very expensive still. We have solar on our house, and we enjoy net metering, but I understand the arguments against it.
youngtaff 2y ago
UK did the same about 10 years ago and it’s cost us billions in extra energy costs since
- bufferoverflow 2y ago
  Somebody has to pay for all that energy storage. And that somebody is always the customer.

Hobadee 2y ago

And tonight, it will generate 0%. Solar without batteries should be illegal; we are just creating a massive problem and doubling down on non-renewables. (Coal, gas, and nuclear plants can't shut down and start up that quickly.) Of course, batteries have their own massive ecological issues to worry about.

ta988 2y ago
No because a lot of loads can be made to run only when solar is present, so you just suck out excess power when it is there.
- Hobadee 2y ago
  Please explain how you just "make" loads run only when solar is present? A quick look at California's "Duck Curve" shows that isn't likely, and reinforces my original point. AC during the day is a major draw, but the second major draw is in the evenings when people get home from work and start doing things. Solar is okay during the summer when the sun is still out (albeit low on the horizon so many arrays have reduced output) but during the winter it's dark before you even get home.
  - ta988 2y ago
    Aluminum smelting, data processing, water treatment and pumping, mining... A lot of industries don't need a 100% duty cycle and would be hally to switch to scheduling if cost incentives are here (and some already do like aluminum smelting in some areas).
thebruce87m 2y ago
> And tonight, it will generate 0%. This is a bold claim. Can I see your source that global solar will fall to 0% generation at any point in the next 24 hours?

MichaelNolan 2y ago

Most people, and most politicians, don’t realize it yet. But by the 2030s solar will be the largest source of electricity in the world. By the 2040s it will be the largest source of energy in the world. It’s going to change the world in ways we don’t yet understand. And nothing can stop this change. The price of solar and batteries will be lower than every other alternative.

atlintots 2y ago
As God intended
brtkdotse 2y ago
That’s comforting in some sense. Got a link or a graph I can use to propagate these news?
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  The recent Rocky Mountain Institute report focuses on the exponentials with some nice graphs: https://rmi.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2024/06/RMI-Cleantech-Revolution-pdf.pdf https://rmi.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2024/06/RMI-C... A blog post covering it, from recent Royal Statistical Society honorary fellow, Hannah Ritchie: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/cleantech-revolution https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/cleantech-revoluti...
  - h0l0cube 2y ago
    Big fan of Hannah Ritchie's analyses, but I do feel like that PDF is a little over optimistic with both future and allegedly recent peaks for fossil fuel consumption. That said, I retrieved a bunch of a bunch of historical data from OWID, and with some cheap regression analysis in Desmos, I compiled this mindmelting graph https://www.desmos.com/calculator/lunahw7gvo https://www.desmos.com/calculator/lunahw7gvo Basically the energy singularity happens in 2034, where wind daily generation + solar daily consumption — which is disturbingly superlinear — eclipses the global energy consumption trend — which is disturbingly linear — and then worldwide storage, which is growing at an even more absurd pace, exceeds solar and wind the following year. And then 4 years after that we have 10 days of worldwide storage. All the while appliances are becoming more efficient. Perhaps AI, VR, and transport electification will soak up the excess, but we've yet to see even crypto make a noticeable bump in global energy consumption above trend, just glancing at the data. Edit: I couldn't get good data on energy storage, so I used 'added capacity' from here and also a quote from the same site that implies there was 173Gwh capacity in 2021: > Global installed storage capacity is forecast to expand by 56% in the next five years to reach over 270 GW by 2026. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/annual-grid-scale-battery-storage-additions-2017-2022 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/annual-grid-s... https://www.iea.org/articles/how-rapidly-will-the-global-electricity-storage-market-grow-by-2026 https://www.iea.org/articles/how-rapidly-will-the-global-ele... All other data was Twh worldwide from OWID datasets multiplied by 1000/365 to determine average daily usage in Gwh.

DavidPiper 2y ago

In Australia, I'm very optimistic about Suncable[1], I just wish they were able to move faster (I do get that national coordination is slow, and that it's an enormous project). Also did a back-of-the-envelope calculation the other day. It would cost roughly $175 billion to add solar panels and a battery to every residential dwelling in Australia (commercially priced and assuming available supply). That's a ton of money, but there are also individual people in the world that could afford that bill and change Australia, and the global power network, forever. [1] https://www.suncable.energy/ https://www.suncable.energy/

jgord 2y ago
Would it not be more efficient to put solar on every bunnings/warehouse/mall rooftop and over parking lots .. rather than on home rooftops ?
- DavidPiper 2y ago
  Quite probably, but I only thought to look up the stats for residential dwellings, and price data was easily available. (I love solar parking lots in particular because it makes double use of the space with zero downside, plus I no longer burn my hands on the steering wheel after going shopping on a 44℃ day.)

kumarvvr 2y ago

My home in India, has a 3 kW system. Generates 30 kWh on sunny days and 20 kWh on the cloudiest days. My hone consumption is about 15 kWh a day. Costed me about 4000 USD.

lawrenceyan 2y ago
Decentralization in action, very cool!
kumarvvr 2y ago
Edit : Its a 5 kW system.

kumarvvr 2y ago

We ought to bring in systems and processes in place, to match peak power generation with peak power usage. Samrt home equipment can play a huge role in that.

averageRoyalty 2y ago

Weird thing to say, given summer solstice is 6 months away and winter solstice just happened.