Lots of people on HN only talking about solar recently. Solar will not solve all our energy needs.
- Batteries are not cheap, nor renewable. Just because there may be advances in the future does not mean batteries are going to always be cheap and freely available. They are also currently quite dangerous to deal with.
- A society based on only solar would have to reduce its power needs in winter, or increase its solar generation capacity to account for winter losses. (Winter losses is largely the shorter daylight hours, but also snow in northern climates)
- Solar only works under ideal conditions, which is to say, in daylight, without clouds, smoke, ash, snow, etc. Even if you have batteries to account for occasional environmental losses, those batteries probably won't last for weeks on end in the event of the more bizarre weather that climate change is bringing.
- At some point, people run out of land to put panels on. Geography and legal/political boundaries around the world vary. Sometimes there just won't be enough land.
- A lot of the cheap manufacturing is centered in one or two countries, which creates a political and economic disadvantage to the rest, if they become over-dependent on this energy generation method. Look at what's happened recently from a loss of access to cheap natural gas.
- Transmission/distribution/management is still a significant challenge which is not solved; you can have all the solar generation you'll ever need and still have power shortages.
Forget batteries for now. How about replacing half of the US that is using coal in the middle of the day?
> - A society based on only solar
Said no one
> - Solar only works under ideal conditions, which is to say, in daylight, without clouds, smoke, ash, snow, etc.
Ok, use them for those ideal conditions then, not coal or nat. gas.
> - At some point, people run out of land to put panels on. Geography and legal/political boundaries around the world vary. Sometimes there just won't be enough land.
You must be joking. Take a look at all the land in the US. Especially in places that are >50% coal in the day, like Wyoming, Montana, and most of the Midwest.
Go ahead and build out all the solar possible. Then not have any way to distribute it, balance the load, recoup the cost from customers, supplant new energy demand outside of a narrow band of peak sunlight hours. Then not be able to pay back all the loans you took on building it out. Then cause the state to pay for the defaulted loans. Then have the unmaintained infrastructure break down and become a writeoff. Then have the economy slowly go downhill due to wasted govt investments, lack of jobs, lack of new investment, and literally lack of power (a shuttered coal plant isn't a flip of a switch to turn back on).
It is not enough to merely fill bids for new generation contracts. There's this assumption that just because you build it, everything else will come. This is a dangerously shortsighted view of the world that only people hoping to win a quick buck on a stock price increase will sell you on. Anybody pushing this idea is vested in a green energy company.
A nation isn't a start-up. There are real-world consequences to running before you can walk. People need to come to grips with this or we're all gonna suffer the consequences.
Holy slippery slope Batman! Was there a suggestion here or just the fear of uncertainty?
The world is filled with uncertain and dangerously shortsighted ideas. Our current power grid has been unintentionally (arguable) geo-engineering the planet for more than a century. Whoopsie daisy.
You're right, the world isn't a startup; there's more to life than financial incentives. I have a lot more tolerance for risk when it comes to the profits of green energy corporations than I do with our collective future.
No one is proposing a solar-only future, and this guy's comment isn't arguing against that...
His comment points out valid concerns for a future that appears to be trending in the direction of relying more and more on solar power - these are real concerns even if solar accounts for ~20% of all power generation, not some 100% solar-only future. It's a reminder that solar power is not some silver bullet solution to energy generation.
I've been hearing these "concerns" for 25 years, yet as the link shows this has not stopped a an ongoing explosion in solar investment - presumably a large chunk of that from people who are not complete fucking idiots and are aware of OPs 1990's-era concerns.
Behind the objection to the solar-only future are fears that this turns the high latitude white countries into energy ghettos. Solar, the anti-colonial energy source.
Solar's experience rate is greater than any other energy source. In the long term, can even wind keep up?
This is the same old dumb hand-wringing, if we replace all daytime sunny-location generation with solar and use fossil fuels for everything else, it's still massive progress.
There is a simple solution to all these problems. Continue to use fossil fuels as we currently are and build massive solar plants attached to carbon sequestration to hit net zero emissions. And that's only the most obvious one, no one is suggesting we generate 100% of electricity from solar.
Batteries are MUCH cheaper and their prices are declining. Especially at grid scale. There are MANY ways to store energy surplus, we're not at that stage yet but we will get there.
Batteries can be recycled. Again, especially at grid scale. Since they contain renewable energy for later use I'll call them WAY more renewable than gas/oil/coal.
> A society based on only solar
No one said that.
> Solar only works under ideal conditions
This is untrue. There are two types of solar, photovoltaic which is what most of us talk about works even under cloud coverage. No, it won't get 100% efficiency but it will give you energy during the day.
Couple that with the fact that wind is stronger during those seasons and that there are other sources of renewables and you will get a more even picture across seasons.
> At some point, people run out of land to put panels on
Right now most deployments are conventional and we still have plenty of land. Unlike regular energy factories we can place panels above every single interstate. Many crop fields and keep the crops which actually grow better and improve electric generation... Every building, every parking lot and right in the middle of the city.
Unlike other means of electric generation this can be deployed everywhere. The main things stopping us from doing it are time, costs and incentives.
Governments regulate roads and can provide financial incentives, they stopped so the costs aren't as great. But with the continued drop in price of panels I'm sure we'll see a lot more of that.
> A lot of the cheap manufacturing is centered in one or two countries
This is just weird. I have no idea what you're claiming here. That if China decides to stop selling or raise the price of panels it will be a problem?
Do you know who controls Uranium? Oil?
Nice thing is that these are "renewable. Once installed we don't need to worry about China for 25+ years...
> Transmission/distribution/management
This is the one correct point here... But not really.
Right now coal/gas plants need to be far from the city center so transmission is expensive. You don't want to breath that in. So should nuclear, you REALLY don't want that near your building.
You can have a solar roof right above your head. The road leading into your city can be solar. Batteries can be stored right outside the city and save the cost of transmitting... They can be underground which further saves on real-estate. A smart grid can take advantage of all of that.
The problem is that the grid is also very out of date and not interconnected enough to trade surplus. This is something that governments need to fix. Even between countries e.g. northern states should sell surplus to Canada and vice versa.
I'm for the free market here. The free market needs an infrastructure to work on. Since solar and wind are some of the cheapest options around, once the grid is properly open and modern, the market will take care of everything. Obviously, that's a huge investment but it will make energy cheaper and cleaner for everyone.
- Batteries are not cheap, nor renewable. Just because there may be advances in the future does not mean batteries are going to always be cheap and freely available. They are also currently quite dangerous to deal with.
- A society based on only solar would have to reduce its power needs in winter, or increase its solar generation capacity to account for winter losses. (Winter losses is largely the shorter daylight hours, but also snow in northern climates)
- Solar only works under ideal conditions, which is to say, in daylight, without clouds, smoke, ash, snow, etc. Even if you have batteries to account for occasional environmental losses, those batteries probably won't last for weeks on end in the event of the more bizarre weather that climate change is bringing.
- At some point, people run out of land to put panels on. Geography and legal/political boundaries around the world vary. Sometimes there just won't be enough land.
- A lot of the cheap manufacturing is centered in one or two countries, which creates a political and economic disadvantage to the rest, if they become over-dependent on this energy generation method. Look at what's happened recently from a loss of access to cheap natural gas.
- Transmission/distribution/management is still a significant challenge which is not solved; you can have all the solar generation you'll ever need and still have power shortages.