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> I'm very excited for solar. In Europe we don't have much fossil fuels, so our "hippiness" is not really a choice. I see some people campaigning against Europe
by ajsnigrutin 1y ago
> I'm very excited for solar. In Europe we don't have much fossil fuels, so our "hippiness" is not really a choice. I see some people campaigning against European green energy or the renewables and it doesn't make sense whatsoever unless you are aligned with Russia or USA.
> The coolest thing about solar is that the devices to capture the fusion energy in the skies are manufactured, unlike other options being built. I'm not anti-nuclear but I don't like its extremely long building phase.
What do you do during a windless cloudy day or (any) night? No solar, no wind, no nothing. Small clouds, large power fluctuations, and you get grid failures.
Yes, sure, nuclear takes 10 years to build, and 10 years ago, people like you were complaining about the same things, and same for 20 and 30 years ago. If we didn't listen to the "it'll take 10 years..." 10, 20, 30 years ago, we'd have a lot more nuclear power now, that also works at night.
- lukan 1y agoI don't think you will find a day where there is no sun and no wind in all of europe. The costal areas usually gave constant wind and the south constant sun. And we do have and build much more high voltage transmission lines. And otherwise there is no technical limit to build lots of rare earth free batteries. Once they are common in allmost every household and once electric cars can be used for that, too, I don't see any technical problem. It takes time and investment of course. And pragmatism till we are there. I don't like coal plants, but I am not in favor of just shutting them down now.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Animats 1y ago> I don't think you will find a day where there is no sun and no wind in all of europe. For the US PJM (US east coast and midwest) and CAISO (California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada) grid areas, total wind power fluctuates over a 4:1 range on a daily basis. Both grids post dashboards where you can see this. Averaging out wind over a large area does not help all that much.
- ceejayoz 1y agoSolar fluctuates too; there's not much at night. This largely means we have to build a bit more of each, and store some. The chances of an entire continent being devoid of wind and solar for an extended period becomes vanishingly small pretty fast.
- Animats 1y agoHere's the CAISO wind graph. This is the total wind energy from four large states. Note that the low point is 1/7 that of the peak, which is around noon.[1] Here's the PJM wind graph.[2] Low point is about 1/4 the peak, again, around local noon. It just doesn't "average out" across even a sizable country. [1] https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply [2] https://dataviewer.pjm.com/dataviewer/pages/public/wind.jsf https://dataviewer.pjm.com/dataviewer/pages/public/wind.jsf
- bryanlarsen 1y agoThere is a paper floating around showing that for both US+Canada and the continental EU there has never been a single hour where there has been no wind and no sun somewhere in a 30 year period.
- ajsnigrutin 1y agoEvery night there is no sun, and there are many times where there is not enough wind for all of our needs. ...or we can just build nuclear powerplants, no need for millions of batteries, power at night too, and all it takes is removing a few "greens" from their position of power.
- ben_w 1y agoNeed the batteries regardless for the cars, and the scale of cars' needs exceeds the current use of the electricity grid.
- mrtksn 1y agoWe will take the day off I guess as we run the critical stuff on nuclear. I don't fancy nuclear because it's too involved, takes forever to build, its a big deal, needs long term planning. I also don't believe that there are enough smart and trustworthy people to take care of a nuclear infrastructure that powers the world for generations, disasters will happen. Let's use the quick, simple, safe and unlimited potential. Nuclear has its place for sure though.
- engineer_22 1y agoSolar efficiency degrades over time. When these sites are no longer economical their owners will turn to bankruptcy, we'll have thousands of hectares of green fields covered in disarrayed broken blue panels, overgrown, unmaintained, a public nuisance of massive proportions in the making.
- mrtksn 1y agoEverything degrades over time.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoThose locations have a large grid connection, which is valuable enough to pay for the decomissioning / cleanup costs so something else can use the connection. Heck, there are companies cleaning up coal plants to use the connection for solar or wind, and that's a lot more expensive than cleaning up an old solar plant.
- ForestCritter 1y agoSolar panels are not degradable and are piling up in toxic landfills as are windmill blades.
- adrianN 1y agoNuclear waste is not biodegradable either...
- ChocolateGod 1y ago> What do you do during a windless cloudy day or (any) night? No solar, no wind, no nothing. Small clouds, large power fluctuations, and you get grid failures. Even when it's cloudy there's still light, it's not as if it's pitch black when there's clouds, what do you think is illuminating everything still? But efficiency in solar panels needs to increase, which is happening.