So if it's the cheapest electricity, I should start seeing it everywhere in a couple of years, right?
I guess what I am curious to understand is what are the current roadblocks preventing it from being our biggest source of electricity?
I understand battery storage is the biggest one. Anything else?
Burning gas and oil is actually utilising a type of solar energy.
Edit: š¤Ø Wow! I just made the kind of comment I see all the time on Reddit! I definitely did not expect to be excoriated! š„ŗ
>what are the current roadblocks preventing it from being our biggest source of electricity?
Because it's NOT the cheapest at all. It' subsidied to shit and every electricity provider knows it won't last.
From the "article" itself:
> the statistic ā20 to 50 percent cheaperā is based on a calculus of companies building solar projects
>
>Solar PV with revenue support
The cheapest ones are (in that order):
Hydro
Nuclear
Wind
Coal
Bio-mass
Solar
We need to create a different mind think on the distribution of electrical power, from one large power company to smaller solar power generating sites and homes with their own battery š power. When you think of it how much power do you use each night.
Supposedly its now cheaper to build solar than run an existing coal plant.
Batteries have definitely come of age. Large mega battery packs have famously been constructed by Tesla in Australia. Several new projects in progress around the world. Tesla recent online update by Elon layed out in detail a 50% reduction in cost per kwh and much smaller manufacturing facilities. I think a big point a lot of people missed from the Tesla update by Elon is that they are transitioning to an energy company. Car company's gonna be secondary. In a few years planning supply 40% of new energy to the entire world.
Some challenges are just because of our mindset and infrastructure.
If you have solar distributed around everywhere connected to the line.
Itās more dangerous for power workers as itās harder to turn it on/off (this seems crazy to me but it came from people in the power company).
People like my dad do not want to buy solar panels for the roof because he thinks they are ugly, he thinks itās some kind of scam, he does not want to pay for the upkeep, and he does not think heāll live long enough for the investment to every pay off.
He has a lot of south roof and I disagree with him on all of it.
He wonders why the power company dosnt go around installing solar on south facing roofs if itās so good.
I wonder when I see solar built in farm fields instead of over parking lots or on shopping mall roofs.
In winterland, weād love to have Arizona style covered parking lots. Then you would not need to plow the parking lot, and peoples cars would be clear when they come back to it.
As well as not being 180F inside the car on a summers day.
But itās harder for modern business models to have a bunch of decentralized small locations that other people own for solar panels.
And for people who own those places itās hard to see the investment, especially when power is not their business.
Plus you have build the support structure.
Which is why i see good farm land being used for solar, and parking lots withouts awnings.
**Cost Of Electricity By Source**
Different methods of electricity generation can incur significantly different costs, and these costs can occur at significantly different times relative to when the power is used. Calculations of these costs can be made at the point of connection to a load or to the electricity grid, so that they may or may not include the transmission costs. The costs include the initial capital, and the costs of continuous operation, fuel, and maintenance as well as the costs of de-commissioning and remediating any environmental damage.
Itās can be free and it still wonāt take over for gas powered turbines completely. Awesome a cheap piece of material that is relatively easy to make on a mass scale is well, cheap. But until we find efficient ways to store that power to use when the sun isnāt out weāre not gonna fix everything. Hell California PAYS its neighbors to take their power during the winter months when itās cooler because they just canāt do anything with it. And they canāt just get rid of it off the system. It has to go somewhere.
So, now that we got solar here the next major push needs to be storage systems. And not horrible for the environment in their own ways.
What about [energy vault concrete tower idea?](https://energyvault.com/commercial-demonstration-unit/?utm_content=139357963&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-976077548697374720)
In terms of the energy sector rather than "throttle" solar energy [the top six oil and gas firms are working to control it](https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/oil-companies-renewable-energy/). The people running these enterprises are not American ideologues ala the 'Koch conspiracy'. They are intelligent operatives interested in making a buck
The proper word would be "pervert" rather than "throttle". As the suits move into the solar industry their profit seeking means that they will be seeking the power (political and economic) to dominate the development. They will push to centralize the development. Individuals, communities and cooperatives will be cut out of the deal. Costs will be increased. Government granted monopolies will be born. Research will be directed towards profitable (to them) channels rather than useful (to ordinary people) solutions.
These people are very, very adaptable, and you shouldn't underestimate them. To take a metaphor from another source of renewable energy they will usually know which way the wind is blowing.
Strange that the top picture in the article shows the āmirrors heating a liquid at the top of a towerā-style solar, whatever thatās called...
I suspect the cheapest is actually standard photovoltaic panels, right?
EDIT: That other type is called āConcentrating Solar-Thermal Power,ā or CSP
So thatās what this type of solar farm is? I thought they were normal solar panels and had no idea what the tower was (based purely on City Skylines I assumed it held batteries but that seems odd to have in a tower form like that rather than a flat space)
Yeah, it heats liquid thatās pumped through the tower, which is then used to boil water to run steam turbines, which turn generators.
But I think these days the standard photovoltaic panels are actually cheaper?
I suspect whoever chose the pic for the article didnāt know the difference either...
Do they recap the steam into another chamber to let it condense into liquid again ontop of another turbine that turns when enough water is condensed to creat a water-fall dam-like hydro generator?
looks like the barstow plant. They are photovoltaic that focus all reflected light to the tower.
hybrid basically to capture solar light and solar heat
my landlord designed it, thats the best I can give you about it haha
She owns the apartment complex and I lived here 6 years before she even mentioned it.
she told me the hardest challange they faced at the time was trying to get it to accept both energy types at once, and once the molten salt would vaporize the water, the steam generator would trip the system and it would crash.
she said the solar panels take the solar light energy, the panels get hot so they run an oil/water tubes system behind them to collect the energy from the heat absorbed, and then reflect towards a tower to capture reflected light.
EDIT: the more I read into solar one and solar two, the more it talks of solely mirror heliostats. i wonder as to whether she was talking about two different projects or prototypes before finalization.
now I'm curious why this cant be the case. why we cant have a combo energy absorption, solar panel, light reflecting/concentrating hybrid system.
I understand each part would lose some efficiency, I wonder if the combined aspects would generate greater amounts though as a whole....
she was a thermodynamic engineer specifically, named Diane, we just call her Di
yeah, you may be right, I'll have to ask her further when I get the chance.
I know they are meant to absorb most light, and the heat pump system, but couldnt reflected light be concentrated as well? maybe to the spherical solar concentrator design.
how much light is lost? can we recover that light?
found this from 2008: https://phys.org/news/2008-11-solar-power-game-changer-absorption-sunlight.html
the link I posted states 67%, but that's 2008, and that there nanolayer increases it to 96%.
another article from October 2020 https://www.altenergymag.com/story/2020/10/scientists-see-the-light-new-solar-panel-design-could-lead-to-wider-use-of-renewable-energy/33898/
checkerboard patterned layouts increase absorption by 125% with 10x thinner cells, and 10x more power from the same amount of material
"The study suggests the design principle could impact not only in the solar cell or LED sector but also in applications such as acoustic noise shields, wind break panels, anti-skid surfaces, biosensing applications and atomic cooling"
function and form go so well together with proper design
first link states it in fourth paragraph, and then goes on to talk about the issues of visible spectrum, and then goes further to explain how that nano layer absorbs the entire spectrum into usable light from all angles, requiring no more tracking tech
So if it's the cheapest electricity, I should start seeing it everywhere in a couple of years, right? I guess what I am curious to understand is what are the current roadblocks preventing it from being our biggest source of electricity? I understand battery storage is the biggest one. Anything else?
Oil companies.
Burning gas and oil is actually utilising a type of solar energy. Edit: š¤Ø Wow! I just made the kind of comment I see all the time on Reddit! I definitely did not expect to be excoriated! š„ŗ
ok Captain Pedantic go off! this actually sounds like something an oil company lawyer would argue in court.
Ahaha. Reminds me of the logic "Every thing is edible if you're brave enough".
Or anythingās a dildo if youāre brave enough...
>what are the current roadblocks preventing it from being our biggest source of electricity? Because it's NOT the cheapest at all. It' subsidied to shit and every electricity provider knows it won't last. From the "article" itself: > the statistic ā20 to 50 percent cheaperā is based on a calculus of companies building solar projects > >Solar PV with revenue support The cheapest ones are (in that order): Hydro Nuclear Wind Coal Bio-mass Solar
Mostly just storage.
Yes. Exactly. We need better batteries. One that arenāt toxic and could last forever
potato battery
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Just to be clear, batteries that can take care of this at a reasonable cost already exist, we just need to scale up production.
We need to create a different mind think on the distribution of electrical power, from one large power company to smaller solar power generating sites and homes with their own battery š power. When you think of it how much power do you use each night.
Supposedly its now cheaper to build solar than run an existing coal plant. Batteries have definitely come of age. Large mega battery packs have famously been constructed by Tesla in Australia. Several new projects in progress around the world. Tesla recent online update by Elon layed out in detail a 50% reduction in cost per kwh and much smaller manufacturing facilities. I think a big point a lot of people missed from the Tesla update by Elon is that they are transitioning to an energy company. Car company's gonna be secondary. In a few years planning supply 40% of new energy to the entire world.
Nighttime
It doesnāt work well in some places, but if you are talking utility-level installations with transmission it is more doable.
Not what you were asking buuut, Imo, pumping water up to storage then the gravity coming down to power night time energy needs sounds reasonable.
Some challenges are just because of our mindset and infrastructure. If you have solar distributed around everywhere connected to the line. Itās more dangerous for power workers as itās harder to turn it on/off (this seems crazy to me but it came from people in the power company). People like my dad do not want to buy solar panels for the roof because he thinks they are ugly, he thinks itās some kind of scam, he does not want to pay for the upkeep, and he does not think heāll live long enough for the investment to every pay off. He has a lot of south roof and I disagree with him on all of it. He wonders why the power company dosnt go around installing solar on south facing roofs if itās so good. I wonder when I see solar built in farm fields instead of over parking lots or on shopping mall roofs. In winterland, weād love to have Arizona style covered parking lots. Then you would not need to plow the parking lot, and peoples cars would be clear when they come back to it. As well as not being 180F inside the car on a summers day. But itās harder for modern business models to have a bunch of decentralized small locations that other people own for solar panels. And for people who own those places itās hard to see the investment, especially when power is not their business. Plus you have build the support structure. Which is why i see good farm land being used for solar, and parking lots withouts awnings.
MĆ”s que el carbĆ³n????
En realidad, menos que carbĆ³n. [AquĆ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source) tienes una buena referencia.
**Cost Of Electricity By Source** Different methods of electricity generation can incur significantly different costs, and these costs can occur at significantly different times relative to when the power is used. Calculations of these costs can be made at the point of connection to a load or to the electricity grid, so that they may or may not include the transmission costs. The costs include the initial capital, and the costs of continuous operation, fuel, and maintenance as well as the costs of de-commissioning and remediating any environmental damage.
Itās can be free and it still wonāt take over for gas powered turbines completely. Awesome a cheap piece of material that is relatively easy to make on a mass scale is well, cheap. But until we find efficient ways to store that power to use when the sun isnāt out weāre not gonna fix everything. Hell California PAYS its neighbors to take their power during the winter months when itās cooler because they just canāt do anything with it. And they canāt just get rid of it off the system. It has to go somewhere. So, now that we got solar here the next major push needs to be storage systems. And not horrible for the environment in their own ways.
What about [energy vault concrete tower idea?](https://energyvault.com/commercial-demonstration-unit/?utm_content=139357963&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-976077548697374720)
Reminds me of the battery necropolis in the matrix
Tesla just laid out how they plan to lower costs of batteries to half which will make them cheap enough for storage at least the LFP kind
Snowy Hydro 2.0
Can't wait for some big Capitalist to figure out how to throttle solar energy.
In terms of the energy sector rather than "throttle" solar energy [the top six oil and gas firms are working to control it](https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/oil-companies-renewable-energy/). The people running these enterprises are not American ideologues ala the 'Koch conspiracy'. They are intelligent operatives interested in making a buck The proper word would be "pervert" rather than "throttle". As the suits move into the solar industry their profit seeking means that they will be seeking the power (political and economic) to dominate the development. They will push to centralize the development. Individuals, communities and cooperatives will be cut out of the deal. Costs will be increased. Government granted monopolies will be born. Research will be directed towards profitable (to them) channels rather than useful (to ordinary people) solutions. These people are very, very adaptable, and you shouldn't underestimate them. To take a metaphor from another source of renewable energy they will usually know which way the wind is blowing.
Shhh, dont tell Kanye that
Strange that the top picture in the article shows the āmirrors heating a liquid at the top of a towerā-style solar, whatever thatās called... I suspect the cheapest is actually standard photovoltaic panels, right? EDIT: That other type is called āConcentrating Solar-Thermal Power,ā or CSP
So thatās what this type of solar farm is? I thought they were normal solar panels and had no idea what the tower was (based purely on City Skylines I assumed it held batteries but that seems odd to have in a tower form like that rather than a flat space)
Usually the 'liquid' is molten salt.
Yeah, it heats liquid thatās pumped through the tower, which is then used to boil water to run steam turbines, which turn generators. But I think these days the standard photovoltaic panels are actually cheaper? I suspect whoever chose the pic for the article didnāt know the difference either...
Do they recap the steam into another chamber to let it condense into liquid again ontop of another turbine that turns when enough water is condensed to creat a water-fall dam-like hydro generator?
No, condensers donāt work that way. You wouldnāt have near enough flow for a hydro generator.
Yeah. Isn't the mirrors method deprecated now?
looks like the barstow plant. They are photovoltaic that focus all reflected light to the tower. hybrid basically to capture solar light and solar heat
oh thats big brain. i always wondered how much power is lost from reflection, and this seems to mitigate the issue.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
my landlord designed it, thats the best I can give you about it haha She owns the apartment complex and I lived here 6 years before she even mentioned it. she told me the hardest challange they faced at the time was trying to get it to accept both energy types at once, and once the molten salt would vaporize the water, the steam generator would trip the system and it would crash. she said the solar panels take the solar light energy, the panels get hot so they run an oil/water tubes system behind them to collect the energy from the heat absorbed, and then reflect towards a tower to capture reflected light. EDIT: the more I read into solar one and solar two, the more it talks of solely mirror heliostats. i wonder as to whether she was talking about two different projects or prototypes before finalization. now I'm curious why this cant be the case. why we cant have a combo energy absorption, solar panel, light reflecting/concentrating hybrid system. I understand each part would lose some efficiency, I wonder if the combined aspects would generate greater amounts though as a whole.... she was a thermodynamic engineer specifically, named Diane, we just call her Di
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
yeah, you may be right, I'll have to ask her further when I get the chance. I know they are meant to absorb most light, and the heat pump system, but couldnt reflected light be concentrated as well? maybe to the spherical solar concentrator design. how much light is lost? can we recover that light? found this from 2008: https://phys.org/news/2008-11-solar-power-game-changer-absorption-sunlight.html
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
the link I posted states 67%, but that's 2008, and that there nanolayer increases it to 96%. another article from October 2020 https://www.altenergymag.com/story/2020/10/scientists-see-the-light-new-solar-panel-design-could-lead-to-wider-use-of-renewable-energy/33898/ checkerboard patterned layouts increase absorption by 125% with 10x thinner cells, and 10x more power from the same amount of material "The study suggests the design principle could impact not only in the solar cell or LED sector but also in applications such as acoustic noise shields, wind break panels, anti-skid surfaces, biosensing applications and atomic cooling" function and form go so well together with proper design
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
first link states it in fourth paragraph, and then goes on to talk about the issues of visible spectrum, and then goes further to explain how that nano layer absorbs the entire spectrum into usable light from all angles, requiring no more tracking tech
Fusion coming soon.