- cross-posted to:
- upliftingnews@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- upliftingnews@lemmy.world
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It’s kinda good but it completely destroyed the European manufacturing for solar
When panels were 30c/watt, projects at $1/watt in EU and US happened. 70c/watt was spent on labour, copper, support structures, and grid connection equipment. All of those can be locally produced, with possible exception of last item.
At 6c/watt, that is over 90% of power projects are local economy boosting instead of 70%. It provides cheaper energy that is useful for industrialization and cost of living benefits too. US tariffs on solar are entirely about protecting oil/gas extortion power instead of a $10B solar production industry that needs fairly expensive support.
Solar imports does not cause energy dependence. You have power for 30+ years with no reliance on continuous fuel supplies. Shoes and apparel is a $450B industry in US. You need new supplies every year, and it makes much more sense to secure supply in that industry for war on the world purposes.
It is good, period.
Local manufacturing is politically advantageous and may employ some people at the same time, but that’s where benefits end.
Europe didn’t reject Chinese face masks during COVID-19, and Europe shouldn’t reject Chinese solar during a climate emergency.
Solve that first, and political struggles later.
It’s not only a political struggle. Working conditions are tremendously better in Europe, Environmental Protection as well. Manufacturing photovoltaics takes a huge pile of chemicals that need to be handled properly to not cause any harm to the environment - China neither cares nor has any other incentives to actually do this properly, which is exactly why they are so cheap. Theres also the issue of poor quality, that if you’re manufacturing something that can have a significant impact on the environment, it should “count” and not be waste 10 years later.
Not only that, China’s subsidies are utterly unfair.
Destroying the environment in one part of the world to “save” a different one due to climate change is just ridiculously stupid and simple minded.
I see where you’re coming with that, and in principle, some of the points you make I would clearly share under different circumstances.
But to me, even with the side effects, rapid rollout of green tech (even if its production is not kept to the best standard) beats slow incremental growth with good standards in place, given the urgency with which world requires it. After all, even poorly produced Chinese options very much do offset their footprint compared to the alternatives.
There are some points for concern, such as the use of lithium ion batteries, for example, but Chinese companies also think ahead and implement alternative options - in case of batteries, they increasingly work with sodium-ion instead.
As per “unfair” subsidies - I’d rather urge all countries to go all in and compete on those, rather than complain about those who implemented them. Subsidies for green tech are essential to secure our future, they boost the green industry and expedite its expansion, and they should only be seen as a good, not the evil.
Manufacturing photovoltaics takes a huge pile of chemicals that need to be handled properly to not cause any harm to the environment
Source for this? Cadmium is exclusive to 1 US manufacturer.
The argument is always “solar/wind still use chemicals” and never “this is the net reliance on extractive industry by energy source”.
That said, general energy conservation is still important. You can’t cut emissions if all your new power just gets funnelled into Grok style AI.
I don’t know that processing silicon is a polluting activity. There is heat involved, and some Chinese producers are 100% solar powered for their processing. Though I’m sure bulldozers or shipps/trucks are involved in obtaining sand.
I’m not a fan of any appeals to gatekeep energy use to “just essentials” instead permitting growth that people want, and cleaning up the energy use involved.
I’m not a fan of any appeals to gatekeep energy use to “just essentials” instead permitting growth
There’s a huge gulf between essential and wasteful.
Solar manufacturing is not destroying China’s environment, fossil fuels are. By a massive margin.
They need to get off that merry go round as quickly as possible. While the efforts they’ve made are incredible it needs to continue to accelerate.
I wouldn’t say they’ve achieved these prices through subsidies in the way many people think. government support pushed their entire renewable industry ecosystem, western manufacturing went belly up, and now they are reaping the benefits.
It seems like China is putting a lot of efforts into becoming environmentally cleaner in the last few years though. I’m hoping that they’ve finally realized that pollution is bad.
There’s something called an environmental Kuznets curve that suggests that a population will sacrifice environmental health to industrial degradation in favor of per capita income up to a point, after which they are affluent enough to care, and after this environmental health improves. China seems to be at the inflection point.
They were at the inflection point back in 2008. They’ve been full tilt towards the improvement side of the curve for nearly two decades.
Local manufacturing is politically advantageous and may employ some people at the same time, but that’s where benefits end.
There are legitimate strategic concerns with sourcing things long-term from potentially hostile states.
Europe should absolutely take advantage of current Chinese production to improve their own green energy efforts, but looking into local production in addition is not just a ‘for-show’ move. As sanctions on Russia show, dependence on markets that can potentially turn hostile can be very damaging.
Sure, that’s what I threw in the “politically advantageous” bucket to not expand on it too much
Though I do not expect China to blackmail Europe with solar, but I see the concern.
Yep the EU will be beholden to a dictatorial regime again. Instead of placating Putin for gas it will be Xi for solar panels and batteries.
At least those items you only need to buy once.
What? Have you ever had a battery powered device for longer than 2 years?
All of them, plus storage batteries are under much less abuse and are different chemistry that lasts a lot longer.
I didn’t mean they only last 2 years but battery degradation is a pretty common and known thing.
By a quick search I didn’t find any claim of storage battery lifetimes outside of 10-15 years, so there doesn’t seem to be a breakthrough in tech I wasn’t aware of. 15 years is hardly the lifetime of a house, so you certainly don’t “buy only once”.
Solar panels also don’t work indefinitely but their efficiency degradation is more on par with the lifetime of major parts of the building, like the roof itself.
The comparison commodity was Gas. Does something that can only be consumed once even have a lifetime?
Sure, but the cost of batteries is at the point where even with replacements every 10-15 years you’ll spend less than you would buying power from the grid.
You’re either an astroturfer or useful idiot spreading oil lobby talking points.
Either you believe the climate science or you don’t. If you do, you know that we don’t have time for industry protectionism.
Do not assume bad faith over anything you disagree with.
While I disagree with the original statement, hostility never changed anyone’s mind.
hostility never changed anyone’s mind
Chronic abuse absolutely shapes human perception and behavior.
In this case, a lot of Lemmy has been so battered down by “China Bad” propaganda that they’ll straight up deny the threat of climate change to justify rejecting Chinese manufactured goods.
I’m not trying to change their mind. I’m trying to expose them.
What you’re doing is called “making shit up”. If you have a problem with their talking point then address it, but don’t make shit up about who they are or why they’re saying what they’re saying.
As in the way you’re accusing me of “making shit up,” just because you’re not aware of decades of lobbying and astroturfing efforts by the fossil fuel industry against nuclear?
So, in your mind this is a hidden lobbyist who tries to abuse “we destroyed local production” argument to make sure Europe slows down solar rollout and remains dependent on fossil for longer?
Not only is this too much of an effort to come from this angle, it’s also not a large platform to speak to.
Seeing an astroturfer in every person that has another angle on the issue is just plain paranoid, and at the same time makes you behave like an asshole towards others. This sort of behavior is what ruined many other platforms, with everyone yelling out of their echo chambers - angry, violent and utterly unproductive.
Algorithms have raised a generation of people doing what best engages them - shitting on each other. And when an alternative like Lemmy appears, where no algorithm is pushing anyone, people make the same mistakes. I urge you to break this chain, with compassion and care.
The planet is literally becoming uninhabitable, and you’re concerned about being cordial towards people arguing against radical action.
Eat me.
Europeans demolished their manufacturing sector when they stripped all the wiring out of the walls during the austerity years.
You can’t blame people for buying foreign when you’ve been defunding domestic infrastructure for over a decade.
By providing big subsidies to green energy developement. Something the EU could also have done but refused to. And so they lost their entire lead.
If EU wants to compete they’re welcome to utilize the same style of subsidies that enabled China to produce these so cheaply.
0.001$ per watt would be way ducking better
Here in Belgium there used to be big government subsidies for solar panels 5-10 ago.
Now the same wattage battery + solar setup without any government subsidies is a good chunk cheaper than that time with the large subsidies.
Pretty cool and shows the power of government renewables subsidies. A huge percentage of houses in Belgium have solar panels now.(and electricity still costs 0.30€/kWh average because of fossil fuel energy lobbies)
Now that there is a local industry around it, most renovations and almost all new builds include them.
As your northern neighbors. We did subsidize it too, but now the privatized energy companies started whining that there wasn’t enough capacity, so now they charge you for creating free energy
Yes I’m considering buying a high power laser so I can send the energy back into space instead of paying the power companies for the privilege of giving them electricity.
Great idea! Some inspiration right here :
Just send the energy directly back to the power executives houses with a high power laser. They want the energy for free so badly to pad their profits and buy a 5th yacht, give it to them 😉
You guys shouldn’t complain, you still have saldering (net metering) ánd get money for the electricity you have left which is still a huge subsidy.
electricity still costs 0.30€/kWh average because of fossil fuel energy lobbies.
This is the price of guaranteed electricity delivered to your doorstep. We can’t get rid of gas fired power stations and kms of electricity grid network yet.
Only partially true. The solar panels almost all inject power back into the grid. Power companies started complaining about their profits when they had to actually pay the users for their power that they generated so now home power generating houses get paid pennies on the dollar for delivering power and reducing the power capacity needed by the power companies and of course the power companies didn’t lower prices at all, so they are just sucking up the difference in pure profit.
That is surprisingly expensive there. I think it’s like 12¢/kwh here (though we have block one and block two prices depending on how many kwh you use in a month, so it could be a higher rate if you are eating through tons of power).
4 million households in Australia have solar panels.
They are great value.
I’m fairly sure that all newly built houses in the UK require solar by law.
All the new houses around here with no solar would indicate that is not true. They’re not even required to have a south facing roof.
At least here in California, having solar panels on a non south facing roof usually only reduces production by 10-20%, as long as it’s not entirely north facing. Solar systems are often slightly undersized - it’s more cost effective to size it so it handles average load rather than the summer peaks you only see for a few weeks per year - so the actual difference for a given system may be less.
With my system, I see the best output from south-east facing panels since they get the morning sun. West facing panels are also fairly popular here due to time-of-use electricity plans. Some electricity plans have peak pricing from 4 to 9 pm, so people want to try and collect as much sunlight as possible during that period before sunset.
The UK is a lot further north, and it’s probably not a massive loss.
It was enough to prevent me getting “free” solar panels (while that was a thing) though, so I’m still salty about that.
Same here in California
They’re installing ridiculously small systems so that they’re barely compliant, but the systems aren’t very useful to the people that buy the house.
It is very poorly implemented. “Builder grade” solar panels in a “smallest compliant” configuration with no concern for architecture to benefit from solar takes place. Builders are intentionally putting the shittiest solar to reduce value of the homes they build so that they can complain about the policy.
$60k per MW or $210M for a nuclear reactors worth (3.5GW). Sure… the reactor will go 24/7 (between maintenance and refuelling down times, and will use less land (1.75km² Vs ~40km²) but at 1% of the cost, why are we still talking about nuclear.
(I’m using the UKs Hinckley Point C power station as reference)
We can’t manufacture and install enough solar farms and storage to get us off of fossil fuel within 20 years and more importantly available investment capital isn’t the limiting factor.
Investments in nuclear power are not taking money away from investments in solar.
We can do both, and it gets us off fossil fuels sooner.
Investments in nuclear power are not taking money away from investments in solar.
This is interesting. Why do you think that?
I would disagree, because is see investment capital as finite. There are only so many investors able to operate at infrastructure scales. And therefore I see nuclear’s true cost as opportunity cost.
From an investor perspective, solar farm projects are a slam dunk once they reach the point of being ready to purchase panels.
There are a lot of things to line up to build a grid-scale solar farm before you get to that point. You need to acquire (the rights to) the land, get permits to connect to the grid, which usually includes construction of the new transmission line to the grid. You need to line up panels from a manufacturer (who in turn has supply chains to manage), and labor to install it. And 100 other things. It typically takes a few years of planning, but get all that in order and it’s a small percentage of the total expense of the project.
At the point you need to do the larger capital raise needed to buy the panels and hire the labour it’s a slam dunk. The project can be completed typically within 12-24 months so there’s a quick process to get to generating revenue for investors, and because solar has gotten so cheap it doesn’t take long to see positive ROI. It’s not like electricity demand is going away either. It’s a very safe bet, once all the pieces are lined up, and not difficult to raise funds once you get to the point of needing the big money.
People on Lemmy/Reddit have this mental model that there’s a fixed budget for investment in the energy transition. If that was the case, then yes it would make sense to go all in on the cheapest technology option.
But that’s how it works. Energy projects are competing with the global market for investment capital with non-energy related investments and there’s no shortage of wealth wanting to throw money at a solar project because they’re low risk/high ROI.
Nuclear projects are a different story, long timelines from construction to revenue generation and high upfront capital costs make them unfavourable investments, they generally need government support to derisk the investment before investors jump on board. Which the governments are reluctant to do because they lack a mandate to do so from the populace. In part because of this mindset that nuclear investment impedes solar or wind investments.
Total solar manufacturing capability has been increasing exponentially. So has wind, and so have various storage methods.
Yes, we can install enough.
Solar has been growing exponentially for the past decade or so, wind has not. Wind has run into supply chain limitations on rare earth metals such as neodymium and isn’t growing exponentially anymore.
It’s doubtful that solar will continue growing exponentially for the next 20 years but even if it does, that only gets us to the point of enough capacity to displace the ~17.9 PWh of electricity generated by fossil fuels in 2023.
To get off of fossil fuels we need to change everything else that’s burning fossil fuels too. That means every vehicle replaced with an EV, every gas furnace replaced with a heat pump. As we do that it’s going to 2-3x electricity demand.
The world burned 140 PWh worth of fossil fuels in 2023, and we only generated 1.6 PWh from solar power. That 1.6 is up from 1.3 PWh in 2022. A lot of that 140 PWh was wasted heat energy so we don’t need to get that high, but we still need to generate something in the area of 60-90 PWh of electricity annually to eliminate fossil fuels.
~4/5th of our energy still comes from fossil fuel, we have a long f’ing way to go. Even with the current exponential growth of solar we don’t get off of fossil fuels within 20 years, and that’s assuming global energy demand doesn’t increase.
Don’t take my word for it. Extrapolate the data yourself. Your rose coloured glasses aren’t helping.
That’s why we also need to reduce our use of pretty much everything. We can never reach zero fossil fuel used, unless we start by reducing the amount of stuff we buy/use, starting with things that currently use fossil fuels: cars, shipping, flights, plastics and so on.
Then we could use renewable energies only or nuclear only or a mix of both to power what is truly necessary for our lives.
Except that this has actually been studied, and a future with Wind/Water/Solar (WWS) is completely viable without a single new megawatt of nuclear.
https://www.amazon.com/No-Miracles-Needed-Technology-Climate/dp/1009249541
It’s not a question of viability it a question of time.
Can we replace all fossil fuels with wind and solar power only? Absolutely.
Can we do it by 2050? Not without a miracle.
Yes, we can. Again, this is all part of these studies. It is easily the most economical viable and fastest plan.
You seem to be misunderstanding friend.
I’m all for building as much wind, hydro, and solar power as possible. It is the cheapest option.
I’m not arguing against that.
People here seem to think that money spent on nuclear is money NOT spent on Wind/Solar/Hydro/Storage/etc as if there’s a fixed budget for all energy transition projects. That’s not the situation.
Insurance and financial institutions are losing big money on climate change disasters, and they are getting data from their actuaries and climate scientist, saying it’s going to get massively worse. There is rapidly growing interest from “big money” private sector investors, In any technology that might solve the climate crisis.
There’s more money investors wanting invest in wind, solar, or hydroelectric projects, than there are projects to invest it. The limiting factor isn’t money.
Believe me, no one would be happier than me to be proven wrong that we can build enough wind, solar, and hydroelectric to get off a fossil fuels by 2050.
But if you extrapolate the current data and the current trend lines, they don’t come anywhere close.
If we also invest in nuclear, we come closer.
Also the budget and timeline is always understated, because otherwise government could withdraw funding if they don’t sink a little more cost into the budget every year.
Because there are nights there are winters there are cloudy and rainy days, and there are no batteries capable of balancing all of these issues. Also when you account for those batteries the cost is going to shift a bit. So we need to invest in nuclear and renewables and batteries. So we can start getting rid of coal and gas plants.
The batteries needed are a lot less than you might think. Solar doesn’t work at night and the wind doesn’t always blow, but we have tons of regional weather data about how they overlap. From that, it’s possible to calculate the maximum historical lull where neither are providing enough. You then add enough storage to handle double that time period, and you’re good.
Getting 95% coverage with this is a very achievable goal. That last 5% takes a lot more effort, but getting to 95% would be a massive reduction in CO2 output.
But Germany has no space for nuclear waste. They haven’t been able to bury the last batch for over 30 years. And the one that they buried most recently began to leak radioactivity into ground water.
And… why give Russia more military target opportunities?
I’m not a rabid anti-nuclear, but there are somethings that are often left out of the pricing. One is the exorbitant price of storage of spent fuel although I seem to remember that there is some nuclear tech that can use nuclear waste as at least part of it’s fuel (Molten salt? Pebble? maybe an expert can chime in). There is also the human greed factor. Fukushima happened because they built the walls to the highest recorded tsunami in the area, to save on concrete. A lot of civil engineering projects have a 150% overprovision over the worst case calculations. Fukushima? just for the worst case recorded, moronic corporate greed. The human factor tends to be the biggest danger here.
… there are somethings that are often left out of the pricing
Another example that gets skimmed over or ignored is the massive cost of decommissioning a nuclear power plant. It typically ranges from $280 million to $2 billion, depending on the technology used. More complex plants can be up to $4 billion. And the process can take 15 to 30 years to complete.
there is some nuclear tech that can use nuclear waste as at least part of it’s fuel
Those are less competitive, and salt reactor attempts have historically caused terminating corrosion problems. The SMR “promise” relies on switching extremely expensive/rare/dangerous plutonium level enriched fuel, that rely on traditional reactors for enrichment, for slightly lower capital costs.
Not an expert, but molten salt reactors are correct. MSRs are especially useful as breeder reactors, since they can actually reinvigorate older, spent fuel using more common isotopes. Thorium in particular is useful here. Waste has also been largely reduced with the better efficiency of modern reactors.
Currently, Canada’s investing in a number of small modular reactors to improve power generation capacity without the need to establish entire new nuclear zones and helps take some of the stress off the aging CANDU reactors. These in particular take advantage of the spent fuel and thorium rather than the very expensive and hard to find Uranium more typically used. There’s been interest in these elsewhere too, but considering how little waste is produced by modern reactors, and the capacity for re-use, it feels pike a very good way to supplement additional wind and solar energy sources.
If France can find space, surely Germany can.
If Finland could find space, Germany definitely can.
Idk, Finland has a much lower population density vs Germany. France is something like 1/2 the population density, but they also have >50 reactors, so surely Germany can find room for a few…
Finland smaller tho.
- Finland: 338,145 km² and 5.6 million people
- Germany: 357,596 km² and 82 million people
Where do you want to put your hazardous waste again?
Yup, but population density should be what matters, because that implies how much usable space there is for waste disposal.
Finland with it’s vast swathes of frozen tundra.
We don’t have vast swaths of Frozen Tundras. This isn’t Alaska.
And it’s actually stored south not north.
And Sweden.
Also when you account for those batteries the cost is going to shift a bit.
You better be bringing units if you’re going to be claiming this.
Still less than half of the LCOE of nuclear when storage is added: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1475611/global-levelized-cost-of-energy-components-by-technology/
Given that both solar and storage costs are trending downwards while nuclear is not, this basically kills any argument for nuclear in the future. It’s not viable on its face - renewables + storage is the definitive future.
And cheaper solar and batteries permits cheaper Hydrogen which provides unlimited and 100% resilient renewable power, and still cheaper than nuclear.
I have a generally negative impression of hydrogen because many of the intended use-cases seem to be a cover story for the gas industry to keep existing, which it very much should not be any more.
Do you know any use-cases where hydrogen is truly warranted, outside for example steel production, which I think might be legit?
The case for an H2 economy is one entirely based on Green H2 made from surplus renewables which are needed most days to have enough renewable energy every day.
That gas companies know how to build pipelines, distribution, and make metered gas sales to customers is a path for them/employees to remain useful without destroying the planet.
Commercial vehicles has legitimate benefits of lower cost from H2 FCs than batteries. Quicker refuel times. Aviation especially benefits from redesigning planes for H2 for the weight savings. Trains/ships need the power/range. Trucks/cars can use the range extension, and could use H2 as removable auxiliary power for extended range.
Those vehicles can also charge the grid, and as hybrids, EVs or grid can be charged from static H2 FCs. For building energy, a FC can provide the usual fraction of domestic hot water from its waste heat. The electric monopoly problem is an opportunity for both producers and consumers to bypass their high rates and fees. Ammonia and fertilizer is traditional use for H2. There needs to be a carbon tax to move away from giant fosil H2 plants powering next door giant ammonia/fertilizer plants.
Hydrogen electrolysis is just one form of electro chemistry. Other fertilizers can be made from simpler versions of the process. It’s not so much that H2 is essential in unlimited quantities, it is that electro chemistry is possible ultra cheaply when there is an abundance of renewables that provides enough energy every day to power their locality. H2 is special as a chemical for being transportable/convertable as mobile or other elecricity/heat.
The case for an H2 economy is one entirely based on Green H2 made from surplus renewables which are needed most days to have enough renewable energy every day.
Wouldn’t it be more compelling to store it in other types of batteries instead of H2 primarily?
That gas companies know how to build pipelines, distribution, and make metered gas sales to customers is a path for them/employees to remain useful without destroying the planet.
I honestly don’t think H2 is a good idea for these use-cases. H2 distribution is a different beast than natural gas distribution, on top of gas combustion just generally not being particularly good compared to common household electrical counterparts (induction for stoves, electric for ovens, heat pumps for heating buildings and water).
Commercial vehicles has legitimate benefits of lower cost from H2 FCs than batteries. Quicker refuel times. Aviation especially benefits from redesigning planes for H2 for the weight savings. Trains/ships need the power/range. Trucks/cars can use the range extension, and could use H2 as removable auxiliary power for extended range.
I imagine refueling times is not necessarily going to be critical for all types of commercial use-cases.
Aviation struggles with the relatively low energy density in H2.
Trains should essentially always be running on catenaries.
Boats might be able to make use of H2, I’m not super familiar with the issues affecting them.
Long-hail trucking should broadly be replaced by the much more efficient rail shipping.
Cars run pretty much fine on electric as is, I’m not sure the case for making H2 cars is compelling enough to be warranted.
Ammonia and fertilizer is traditional use for H2.
This might be a good niche for H2 to fill.
All in all, I’m still not convinced that large-scale H2 buildouts is a good use of our resources, but there are definitely a few compelling niches that it can fill. We need to be wary of them being co-opted by blue hydrogen fossil fuel companies though, which often seems to be the case today.
The economics of batteries are that they must be fully charged and discharged daily to pay off. A 2 day average cycle is double the cost of energy in using them.
In spring and fall we get positive happy headlines that “all electricity was provided by solar/renewables” during 1 hour or so during a day, or that electricity prices went negative. These seasons are low demand with good enough sun. Batteries get let those days/seasons get to 24 hour power from renewables, but then summer heatwaves won’t fill demand even with more sun, winter will not charge up the batteries enough. H2 electrolysis is needed to have enough solar and batteries to cover all those needs, and then use H2 to cover winter supplemental needs. H2 supports not just more solar, but also more batteries. Makes sure batteries can always discharge before the sun comes up.
imagine refueling times is not necessarily going to be critical for all types of commercial use-cases.
Commercial vehicles, need to pay operators for downtime, and downtime is time not earning revenue. it is a bid deal to them.
Aviation struggles with the relatively low energy density in H2.
At $4/gallon diesel/kerosene, a plane will cost 100x in fuel as its purchase costs. We can already produce green H2 at $2/kg compressed. Which is equivalent to $1/gallon gasoline fuel when used in a FC. Redesigning planes, and delta wing for long range specifically, for H2 is worth liquifying the H2 for the weight savings and range over compressed. It’s also that price that can compete well with commercial EV charging.
You’re using factors of less than 10 to argue against a factor of 100.
I think there’s a contingent of people who think nuclear is really, really cool. And it is cool. Splitting atoms to make power is undeniably awesome. That doesn’t make it sensible, though, and they don’t separate those two thoughts in their mind. Their solution is to double down on talking points designed for use against Greenpeace in the 90s rather than absorbing new information that changes the landscape.
And then there’s a second group that isn’t even trying to argue in good faith. They “support” nuclear knowing it won’t go anywhere because it keeps fossil fuels in place.
What isn’t sensible about nuclear? For context, I’m coming from the US in an area with lots of empty space (i.e. tons of place to store radioactive waste) and without much in the way of hydro (I’m in Utah, a mountainous, desert climate). We get plenty of sun as well as plenty of snow. Nuclear should provide power at night and throughout the winter, and since ~89% of homes are heated with natural gas, we only need higher electricity production in the summer when it’s hot, which is precisely what solar is great for.
So here’s my thought process:
- nuclear for base load demand to cover nighttime power needs, as well as the small percentage of homes using electricity for heat
- solar for summer spikes in energy usage for cooling
- batteries for any excess solar/nuclear generation
If we had a nuclear plant in my area, we could replace our coal plants, as well as some of our natural gas plants. If we go with solar, I don’t think we have great options for electricity storage throughout the winter.
This is obviously different in the EU, but surely the nordic countries have similar problems as we do here, so why isn’t nuclear more prevalent there?
Because it makes no sense, environmentally or economically speaking. Nuclear is, as you said, base load. It can’t adjust for spikes in demand. So if there’s more energy in the grid than needed, it’s gonna be solar and wind that gets turned off to balance the grid. Investments in nuclear thus slow down the adoption of renewables.
Solar is orders of magnitude cheaper to build, while nuclear is one of the most expensive ways to generate electricity, even discounting the waste storage, which gets delegated the the public.
Battery technology has been making massive gains in scalability and cost in recent years. What we need is battery arrays to cover nighttime demand and spikes in production or demand, combined with a more adaptive industry that performs energy intensive tasks when it’s abundant. With countries that have large amounts of solar, it is already happening that during peak production, energy cost goes to zero (or even negative, as traded between utilities companies).
About the heating: gas can not stay the main way to heat homes, it’s yet another fossil fuel. What we need is heat pumps, which can have an efficiency of >300% (1kWh electricity gets turned into 3kWh of heat, by taking ambient heat from outside). Combined with large, well-insulated warm-water reservoirs, you can heat up more water than you need to higher temperature during times of electricity oversupply, and have more than enough to last you the night, without even involving batteries. Warm water is an amazing energy storage medium. Batteries cover electricity demand as well as a backup in case you need uncharacteristically much water. This is a system that’s slowly getting adopted in Europe, and it’s great. Much cheaper, and 100% clean.
We also should consider HVDC lines. The longest one right now is in Brazil, and it’s 1300 miles long. With that kind of range, wind in Nebraska can power New York, solar in Arizona can power Chicago, and hydro all around the Mississippi river basin can store it all. We may have enough pumped hydro already that we might not even need batteries, provided we can hook it all up.
HVDC is much more expensive than Hydrogen pipelines, which doubles as storage and transmission, and can provide continent wide resilience, even when local renewables provide much cheaper power when it is available than either long distance electric or H2 power.
The studies on hydrogen pipelines tend to assume there’s some existing reservoir of hydrogen. Making hydrogen in a green way is expensive, and that completely ruins its economic viability.
The expense part gets taken care of with OP’s solar prices. Battery costs help too.
What we need is battery arrays
I absolutely agree. My support for nuclear is not instead of renewables, but in addition to it. Nuclear is a proven technology, and at least in the US, we have a lot of space where we can store waste relatively inexpensively (nobody’s going to care about a massive landfill in Nevada).
The problem with going for 100% renewables is that I don’t think we can really keep up with battery production, and if we push for dramatically increasing our energy storage capacity (whether that’s chemical batteries, pumped hydro, etc), it’s going to cost a ton to transition. Solar is cheaper than nuclear, but solar + battery backup currently is not, especially if it needs to run over the winter when solar generation is much lower.
I’m not saying we should stop installing battery-backed solar projects, but that we should add nuclear to the list. Our electricity demand will only continue to increase, so we need multiple solutions to replace coal and eventually natural gas. One of the major cost and time limitations for nuclear is construction, and that’s because we don’t build many of them. If we line up multiple plant projects at the same time, we can make better use of our engineering resources (it’s a lot easier to build 10 of something back to back than 10 of something months or years apart), which will make nuclear more attractive compared to other options.
gas can not stay the main way to heat homes
Agreed, and I’ve actually been looking into heat pumps for my own home. I already have an external AC unit, so theoretically the transition shouldn’t be that hard (air ducts already exist).
The problem is that, in my area, winters get pretty cold, and heat pumps are a lot less efficient at heating when it’s cold. The solution is to dig a deep hole to bury the heat exchangers so they get a more consistent temperature to maintain efficiency, and that’s a really expensive project for existing structures (not bad for new construction). The transition to heat pumps is going to be very slow because of that large upfront cost/poor efficiency in winter.
Even if this wasn’t an issue, there’s still the massive problem of existing electricity production (in my area) being fueled by coal and natural gas. If I switch to a heat pump, I may be polluting more than if I stuck with gas (it’s pretty close last I checked). My state (ignoring transportation) gets something like 1/3 of its energy from coal, about half from natural gas, and most of the rest comes from solar (and a little from wind). We need something to handle that base load supply, and installing batteries is going to be expensive (esp. since hydro isn’t really an option in our desert) and probably take many years regardless. Nuclear can be built today, and in my area, it can be built on the other side of a mountain range from the bulk of the population.
Warm water is an amazing energy storage medium
I doubt we have enough water here in the desert to handle that. We already have problems with our existing inconsistent water supply for regular users, locking up even more water is going to be a really tough sell.
I agree it’s going to be a challenge. But I’m sceptical nuclear is going to help there; from historical experience, it takes upwards of 20 years to build a reactor. Even if that gets expedited through modern technologies, we’re still talking something like 15 years until they come online, and you’re still paying all the upfront costs throughout that time. Whereas solar can go from concept to grid in 2 years, and batteries aren’t much worse.
The desert indeed makes large-scale warm water storage infeasible, but the kind of home setups I mentioned first should still be good to go, it’s basically only your preexisting heating loop times 2 or 3, that’s negligible compared to farming demands, and it stays in the loop forever (except for leakage). Storing warm water that you’d use anyways also doesn’t increase demand.
The desert has the benefit that solar can be really well calculated, since you (mostly) need to consider seasonal changes in sunlight, not cloud cover. That can be planned around
You got a point about the heat pump efficiency though. For new communities there should be a trend towards centralized heating that provides for a whole city block, to make use of economy of scale and raise efficiency beyond what is reasonable for a single home. But that’s dreaming to far, probably
it takes upwards of 20 years to build a reactor. Even if that gets expedited through modern technologies, we’re still talking something like 15 years until they come online, and you’re still paying all the upfront costs throughout that time
From some reading, it seems a lot of that is bureaucracy (non-safety related), construction delays, and lawsuits. I wouldn’t be surprised if we could get that down to 10 years average with a concerted effort, assuming we can build multiple in parallel.
Whereas solar can go from concept to grid in 2 years, and batteries aren’t much worse.
Sure, on a small-ish scale. A nuclear plant will put out way more electricity than a typical solar project will. So while the time to getting value from it will be a lot shorter w/ solar, they tend to chip away at existing infrastructure instead of completely replacing plants.
The desert has the benefit that solar can be really well calculated
Oh yeah, solar is incredibly effective here, the main problem is storage. Hydro isn’t really a thing since our dams are intended to keep water for summer use, and they refill when we’d want to be generating power. Warm water also isn’t feasible at scale, and promising technologies still aren’t proven. I’m especially interested in hydrogen storage, since it could be really useful for long-haul trucking (we’re a pretty big hub for that) in addition to storage for winter generation.
I was interested in EVs being used for overnight power storage (basically recharge during the day while at work), but it seems like that hasn’t materialized.
centralized heating that provides for a whole city block
I don’t think we’d need to go that far, putting in buried heat exchangers on new construction isn’t that expensive, and I’d expect coordinating billing and whatnot would be more annoying than it’s worth (need an HOA, and HOAs can really suck).
The better option, IMO, is to create mixed-use zoning near transit hubs, which would encourage use of mass transit and allow for those economies of scale you’re talking about without annoying planned communities w/ HOAs (i.e. business below you could pay your heating/cooling bill). Maybe that’s what you were getting at, my point is that it doesn’t make as much sense for residential areas IMO, but it could make sense for mixed zoning areas.
I do want to point out that I’m not obsessed w/ nuclear or anything, I just think it’s a good option to replace existing base-load plants running on coal and natural gas.
You bring up heated water as a method of storage, and it reminds me of a neighborhood in Alberta, Canada that uses geothermal + solar heated water storage for 52 homes. They’ve been able to successfully heat the entire neighborhood with only solar over the winter in 2015-2016 and have gotten > 90% solar heating in other years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Landing_Solar_Community
There’s a huge number of new storage technologies being developed, and the fact that some even work on a seasonal basis for long term storage is amazing.
That’s pretty cool! Still seems to have some issues, but as the technology matures, that seems like a promising technology. I didn’t know seasonal warm water storage was a thing
I’m very much in the first camp and need to remind myself whenever I think about arriving due nuclear
A MW of solar averages out to about .2 MWh per hour. A MW of nuclear averages about .9 MWh per hour.
But even so as the UK does it, nuclear power isn’t worth it. France and China are better examples since they both picked a few designs and mass produced them.
China’s experience indicates you can mass produce nuclear relatively cheaply and quickly, having built 35 out of 57GW in the last decade, and another 88GW on the way, however it’s not nearly as quick to expand as solar, wind, and fossil fuels.
In many regions solar capacity factor is much higher than 20%; for example, the entire US. https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/2021/utility-scale_pv
MW/h
There is MW which is a unit of power and then there is MWh which is a unit of energy, but what is MW/h supposed to mean?
Thanks for catching the typo.
Maybe just use percentages instead of these weird units. 0.2 MHh per hour is just 0.2 MW, or 20%.
It seems easier to say solar produces an average of 20% of it’s peak capacity.
Nuclear actually around 0.6, because 1/3 is always off for repair and control.
Maybe in the UK where each plant is basically unique instead of having improvements from all the previous iterations. In the US it’s around 93%. I don’t know how to search China or France’s numbers, but I suspect they’re similar or better.
My observations are from France, germany, switzerland though. Maybe we are a bit more careful and by-the-protocol here, who knows.
On the other hand, rarely has one more than 3 blocks here, and a colourful mix of generations. You might be right.
but at 1% of the cost, why are we still talking about nuclear
Sure… the reactor will go 24/7 (between maintenance and refuelling down times, and will use less land
The land thing isn’t anywhere near enough of a concern for me, especially when dual uses of land are quite feasible.
24/7 is just about over commissioning and having storage. Build 10x as much and store what you generate. At those sorts of levels even an overcast day generates.
Using the remaining 99% of the cost to bury batteries underground would seem reasonable.
Batteries can be containerized in modules, with a turnkey connection that remains mobile. Solar can use those containers as support structure. Hydrogen electrolyzer/fuel cells can also be built in same containers.
Underground construction generally isn’t cost effective. It costs way more to get dirt and rock out of the way than just building a frame upwards. There might be other reasons to do it, but you want to avoid it if possible.
The underground suggestion was only to counter the argument of space usage.
There’s a million other ways to go. Solar on every parking lot, over every irrigation canal, and along every highway. Some farming can be done under solar panels, as well; some commercial crops prefer shade, such as strawberries.
The US uses about 30% of its land for cows. One simple plan is that we all eat one less burger a week. Which would be a good idea, anyway.
Land usage is so not a problem as soon as you open up the dual use possibilities.
For dual use, I’m particularly partial to the solar fence
Because grid level power delivery is about FAR more than just raw wattage numbers. Momentum of spinning turbines is extremely important to the grid. The grid relies on generation equipment maintaing an AC frequency of 60 hz or 50hz or whatever a country decides on. Changing loads throughout the day literally add an amount of drag to the entire grid and it can drag the frequency down. The inverse can also happen. If you have fluctuating wind or cloud cover you can bring the whole grid down if you can’t instantly spin up other methods to pick up the slack.
reliable consistent power delivery is absolutely critical when it comes to running the grid effectively and that is something that solar and wind are bad at
Ideally we will be able to use those technologies to fill grid level storage (batteries, pumped hydro) to supply 100% of our energy needs in the not too distant future but until then we desperately need large, consistent, clean power generation.
You aren’t wrong, but you are assuming that the grid is required. Solar panels can be installed at the point of use, and then the grid doesn’t come into it at all.
I agree, but off grid solar requires a lot more panels and personal infrastructure owned by the customer than grid tied solar. and a storage solution for night time and winter and cloudy days.
A typical house isn’t going off grid and maintaining a worry free electric schedule without a minimum of 25,000$ of panels, mounts, inverters, batteries, BMS, cabling, installation, and permits.
To be fair, the cost is still less than the amount of time the system will last so economically is can be viable but who has 25,000$ just sitting around…you have to be able to install it yourself to save enough money to really even think about doing it.
I am on your side, but we should be focusing on storage technology right now because solar is honestly really advanced at this point. Once those technologies can work together all the arguments against solar that make sense disappear.
That’s the worst way to do solar, though. It doesn’t get to take advantage of economies of scale in installation and inverters. Some levelized cost of energy studies put it just as expensive as nuclear.
Solar gets its cheapness when it’s in fields or on top of large, flat commercial/industrial buildings.
Do commercial/industrial buildings not require power then?
There’s often enough space on those buildings for excess power. Not all those buildings have particularly intensive energy needs. Many are just warehouses.
You have to have some base load it can’t be all renewable because renewables just aren’t reliable enough. The only way to get 100% reliability from solar for example would be to build a ring of panels around the equator (type 1 civilization stuff).
Of all the options for base load, nuclear is the least worst, at least until we can get Fusion online, but you know that’s always 20 years away.
Storage. It’s all about storage. In exactly the same way that our water is handled. We have reservoirs to handle the times when natural water supply is low.
That’s why we have hydro. Its a giant battery. We can also make synthetic methane.
We absolutely can do 100% renewable.
Hydro is great but it’s not clean it requires you to flood vast areas of land, it’s quite damaging to wildlife.
It is also highly situation dependent, you be quiet exactly the right kind of geography in order to be able to build hydro and then you require that there is no one living in the affected area otherwise it gets very expensive very quickly assuming you’re allowed to do it at all.
I didn’t say hydro is perfect. It is renewable. And its a giant battery.
Hydro is kinda awful for the environment.
Better than fossil fuels
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Good news perhaps but I’m sure I won’t see any benefit in Scotland, still thousands to add solar panels.
Scotland has really good wind power, anyway. Between that, nuclear, and a few other renewable sources, you guys are down to 10% fossil fuel energy use. So don’t worry about solar.
You know, if you people wanna ditch the Kingdom and join the club, I don’t think it’s too late.
Yup. Average here in south US is 25k for a home system without battery backup.
At the risk of getting political, you should expect that to go up under Trump. The tariff war with China during his first term kept panel prices high, and it’s going to be worse this time. And that’s not his only policy that will affect pricing.
Installation the trouble. Roofing is expensive. Next time you have to redo the roof: then it’s time
For electricity generation: Solar across the UK was about 5% in last year, while Wind was about 29% and Nuclear 13.9%, and hydro 1.3% - so 49.2% of electricity generation over the last 12 months was carbon neutral.
That’s a huge success story - still a long way to go, particularly as that does not include Gas burned in homes, but the UK is moving in the right direction. And Scotland is a huge source of Wind & Hydro power for the whole country.
So even if the barriers to solar in your home are still high, the grid is getting cleaner and cleaner every year. There are also community projects installing wind generators which you can join/invest in if you do want to try and get a slice of cleaner energy and solar is not realistic.
Edit: Source on UK electricity generation: https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/historical Good data on UK electricity generation
Solar has always an extremely high ratio for megawatt per mass unit.
This price is really good
Just have to buy 1100 panels 😋 but then the price is 0.055€/watt …
I Want one, but only one or a couple, to put on my balcony…
Thousands of people buying rooftop panels was never going to be the best way towards a Water/Wind/Solar (WWS) future. Fitting panels to the roof has to work around the roof geometry and obstructions like vents. That makes every job a custom job. It also means thousands of small inverters rather than a few big ones.
Compare that to setting up thousands of panels on racks in a field. As long as it’s relatively open and flat, you just slap those babies down. You haul in a few big inverters which are often built right into shipping containers that can just be placed on site, hooked up, and left there. Batteries need inverters, too, so if your project includes some storage, then you only need one set of inverters.
I get the feeling of independence from the system that solar panels on the roof gives people, but it’s just not economically the best way to go. The insanely cheap dollars per MWh of solar is only seen when deploying them on a mass scale. That means roofs of commercial/industrial buildings or bigger.
Rooftop units might not be the least expressive, but they are absolutely the way to go. The less we rely on the utilities, the more demand we take off of their adding grid, that they refuse to upgrade. It also means more energy independence. A friend of mine has a small rooftop setup that has completely offset his electricity isn’t to the punt that he bought a plugin hybrid that never goes out battery for his day to day travels and costs him nothing to charge.
If you want energy independence, push for community solar. Neighborhoods or municipalities get together to own their own solar field. Then you get a measure of independence while also taking advantage of economies of scale.
These are topcon modules only. Considering a 400W panel will have about 72 modules in it, that’s only about 15 panels worth. Of course, then you have to actually build the panel and connect the modules, put it behind glass inside a frame, then put in a bypass diode and leads for connection. So an actual panel ends up being about 5-10X the cost of the modules per W.
You can pay a lot less than 10x for completed panels. https://store.santansolar.com/ amazed me.
does the link not work in 'murica?
Not sure what they did I searched the site and went to their clearance section but I don’t know enough about panels and invertors to really know if they are actually good prices or anything. https://www.santansolar.com/product-category/sale/clearance/
Would not want to infect patriots with Communism
The link doesn’t work at all.
If they simply didn’t want to sell to a certain demographic it would still load the website but would just say they don’t operate in your region. The error you get back is once you get back if the domain doesn’t exist.
Theyre $1.25 per watt in south America right now (we have an energy crisis due to climate change caused drought)
Assuming these prices are ideal for a solar grid, which EU country(s) would have the highest chance of shifting towards solar; I wonder
Probably all of them. Germany is really not ideal for solar in terms of weather, yet they are installed by many people all over the place, even today. With the cheaper prices things will get even better.
Germany is already over 50% renewable. :)
Appreciate that, glad to see there is data pointing these things out
Any good store that will sell me a super cheap and good set including inverter here in Germany? I mean they’re on Amazon for 250€, but maybe there is a better shop?
Any of the Discounters, really. ALDI, Lidl, Netto, etc have regular offers in their online shops.
Hmm. But with those three, the simple sets (2x400W + power inverter) seem to be ~100€ more expensive than on Amazon. Maybe I have to go with Amazon then. Thanks anyways! I’ll keep an eye on discounted offers.
A hundred euro is quite a difference. Didn’t expect it to be that much, tbh.
The only consolation is that, with the discounter sets, you will get something that has been tried and tested and everything is according to the relevant technical standards. Should be, anyway.
What I’d like best is to just buy them at a regular store. Not do onlines shopping in the first place. (And then figure out how to return something that was delivered with some special service. I guess you can’t drop them off at the next DHL place, like with the other Amazon stuff.)
But I guess they’re fine, too. The Amazon sellers have the same “brand” inverters like Ecoflow and Growatt.
