3 ms·

I'm aware of such calculations and they are in disagreement with fundamental limitations of these technologies. Nuclear has EROI of 20-80, solar has something l

I'm aware of such calculations and they are in disagreement with fundamental limitations of these technologies. Nuclear has EROI of 20-80, solar has something like 3 if you account for inverters and batteries. The fact that they forgot how to build reactors (France got them at 1.5B per GW adjusted for 2011 prices) and that China burns more and more coal to maintain the solar bubble doesn't change much long term. I don't think the current situation around solar is sustainable. I could be wrong of course but hopefully we'll live long enough to see the outcome. In the meanwhile I heavily bet on the nuclear being the future.

locallost 1y ago
Solar EROI is not 3. To see that this cannot be the case: * last year around 600GW of solar was deployed, or 0.6TW * Imagine a 12.5% capacity factor (which is low) * Imagine their capacity will degrade linearly to 80% over 20 years (I don't know if this is completely true but it's a rough approximation), thus their average output is 90% * Imagine they will stop producing electricity after exactly 20 years (which is not true, they will continue to work unmaintained for decades) They will thus produce total electricity of .6 * .9 * .125 * 24 * 365 * 20 11826TWh If their EROI was 3 it would mean it took 3942 TWh to produce them. China used a total of 9852TWh of electricity in 2024. I would strongly presume China did not use 40% of its electricity to produce solar panels.