from the power-to-the-people['s-homes] dept.
Residential solar is cheap, but can it get cheaper? Paths to $0.05 per kWh
The price of solar panels has fallen far and fast. But the Energy Department (DOE) wants to bring those costs down even further, especially for residential homes. After all, studies have shown that if every inch of useable rooftop in the US had solar panels on it, the panels could provide about 40 percent of the nation's power demand. Right now, the DOE's goal is residential solar that costs 5¢ per kilowatt-hour by 2030.
In a new report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), researchers mapped out some possible pathways to that goal. Notably, the biggest barriers to cost reduction appear to be the stubborn "soft costs" of solar installation. Those soft costs include supply chain costs, labor costs, and sales and marketing costs that aren't related to the physical production of solar cells at a factory.
NREL wrote: "Because the 2030 target likely will not be achieved under business-as-usual trends, we examine two key market segments that demonstrate significant opportunities for cost savings and market growth: installing PV at the time of roof replacement and installing PV as part of the new home construction process."
The report mapped out two "visionary" pathways (as well as two "less-aggressive' pathways) to achieving those cost reductions within the roof replacement and new home construction markets. The result? The only way NREL found it could achieve the "visionary" cost reductions was by assuming that solar installers would start selling low-cost solar-integrated roof tiles before 2030, "which could significantly reduce supply chain, installation labor, and permitting costs."
[...] [It's] not just Tesla working on this: the Colorado-based lab cites CertainTeed's solar shingle product and GAF's solar panels as examples of products breaking the divide between roof and solar panel installation.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @04:38PM (7 children)
I worry that solar tech doesn't maintain or recycle well.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:41PM (4 children)
But, but, but, but, you aren't supposed to care about how much rare materials are used to create new solar cells every few dozen years! or how much non-nonrenewable resources are consumed doing that! or how many child laborers turn in to piles of meat producing each panel! Or that in a few thousand years there will be piles of dead solar stuff piled to the sky in a land fill!
IT'S GREEN DAMMIT! Green is good for the planet! Why do you hate the planet!? You are supposed to buy it without thinking because we say IT IS GREEN!
Oh, and buy a new tablet or smart phone each year because paperless is green too!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday February 21 2018, @06:07PM
To summarize: If externalities were actually included in the price, purchasing decisions may evolve.
Which is as valid for rare minerals and child labor for green tech, as it is for military and pollution for dino juice.
Given the current pentagon budget, plus the cost of smog, green energy is still probably ahead by a lot.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by fritsd on Wednesday February 21 2018, @06:33PM (1 child)
I wonder it they still teach Lavoisier's 18-th century Law of the Conservation of Mass [wikipedia.org] in high schools chemistry???
Q: Where do the rare materials and elements that are used to create new solar cells come from?
A: Old solar cells.(*)
Q: Where does the rare earth Neodymium in those humongous wind turbine stators come from?
A: Old wind turbine stators (same *). In fact, I suspect they don't wear down that much.
Besides Neodymium isn't so rare, just difficult to separate from the other Lanthanides used in fireworks and cigarette lighters.
(*) Yes, I know what "steady state" means, that we aren't there yet, and I concur that evaporation and wind abrasion and vandalism and lightning strikes and spontaneous nuclear transmutation (if any) of the solar cells/wind turbines means, that a fraction of a percentage of the materials has to still be mined.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @05:59PM
You make the very incorrect assumption that everyone will always "recycle". As long as it is cheaper to mine new material, old material may wind up in a landfill where it becomes harder or impossible to access in the future.
And that still does not take in to consideration the fresh materials, resources, and labor required to build something new from old materials. Something made out of recycled material did not just pop in to existence from unicorn magic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @03:28PM
But in 30 years(*) we will have fusion, and all our energy problems are solved anyway!
(*) or 30 years after that, or 30 years after that, or …
(Score: 4, Interesting) by insanumingenium on Wednesday February 21 2018, @06:11PM (1 child)
I have seen a lot of varying information about the lifetime of traditional power infrastructure, often around 40-60 years, with examples pushed well beyond designed lifetime (which would likely happen to solar as well). Maintenance is minimal, I can't imagine it compares at all with traditional power-plants with maintenance engineers. All the residential solar I know of gets nothing more than a squeegee, if they get even that. Other than initial config issues I have never heard of any of them requiring any special attention. Installing panels equivalent to a traditional plant every 20 years would probably be less man hours than maintaining a traditional plant for a single year. The residential instals I have personally seen (averaging probably 12KWhr or so) average around 20 man-hours start to finish, usually banged out in an afternoon, then two weeks of bureaucratic hurdles before turn up.
I don't think we are likely to run out of silica anytime soon. And most of the system is tied up in support electronics which are (mostly) recyclable, and would have equivalents regardless of plant type. I am not sure what you think wouldn't recycle, especially given how much of our modern infrastructure of every type relies on doped silicon.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:32AM
The infrastructure for lead acid battery recycling is very well developed. In theory once enough solar panels are wearing out, they'll probably be some kind of chipper-shredder and flotation tank thingy that instantly and cheaply separates aluminum structure, copper wires, silicon panel chunks. Just not yet. Possibly something thats never been implemented might be impossible, some find this likely, I don't, but its possible.
Obviously (?) solar panels should last immensely longer than lead acid batteries such that hyperautomated solutions might never become necessary anyway.
One interesting option WRT recycling is not to. You have to recycle lead acid batteries to keep the lead out of the environment, however the environment doesn't have an issue with coarse ground silica. Pulverize it down to sand grain size and cast into concrete for roads or whatever. It is, after all, purified sand, more or less, so making a road out of purer than usual sand is not a big deal.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday February 21 2018, @04:46PM (49 children)
"After all, studies have shown that if every inch of useable rooftop in the US had solar panels on it, the panels could provide about 40 percent of the nation's power demand."
If every inch of usable rooftop was used to grow food, we could do a lot more important things than replace a handful of nuclear power stations.
If every inch of usable rooftop was used to filter water, we could do a lot more important things than replace a handful of nuclear power stations.
If every inch of usable rooftop was used to house the homeless, we could do a lot more important things than replace a handful of nuclear power stations.
If every inch of usable rooftop was used to do a play area for children, we could do a lot more important things than replace a handful of nuclear power stations.
The problem is... "every inch of usable rooftop" is the absolute, top, complete maximum if every landowner suddenly decides, or is FORCED, to give it up to solar panels or whatever. That's the BEST it could ever be, in an incredibly unrealistic scenario. By the best (probably overblown) statistics.
Or you could just use a few fields out in an empty state in the middle of nowhere and do the same. What's New York? 789 km² How much farmland is there in the US? 3,730,000 km²
The U.S. has 2.3 billion acres of land. Only 66 million acres are considered developed lands.
Given the amount of disparity there, sacrifice some farmland, and then provide 100% of the necessary power in one, easy-to-access, easy-to-service place without land ownership problems, and solve the problem once and for all.
Rather than try to change a tiny proportion of very developed land to magically do something, just buy up some of the land doing nothing and do it there with predictable outcomes.
Sure, "transmission losses", etc. But come on. It's just ridiculous to suggest that sticking some panels on top of a skyscraper is helping, when you could just build a field full of the damn things if you wanted and pipe it in as normal.
If you want to get energy prices down, stop faffing about with such silly small-scale ideas and just scale up what you have already. If solar is so profitable, then companies would be able to just buy up swathes of land, slap panels in them, and live off the proceeds in perpetuity with minimal maintenance. Fact is, they need huge subsidies and energy companies FORCED to use them to claim carbon credits, or they won't go anywhere near it. Even Elon Musk isn't stupid enough to get involved in such things.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:01PM (11 children)
I kinda see your point - but - we've already given up tens of millions of acres of arable land to make room for all those rooftops. Might as well make those rooftops dual purpose, or even multiple purpose. How about maybe putting sod on the roof, to help green up America, then allow children to play on the sod, and mount those solar panels overhead, to protect the children from sunburn? And, if you get tired of having just plain old sod, you can always grow some popcorn, or tomatoes, or whatever. Wow - I've just recovered millions of acres of arable land!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:10PM (1 child)
Because you've just severely overloaded dozens of structural members in our underbuilt American houses as a result of overstressing them with three stories worth of unexpected weight.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:21PM
But, I wasn't going to put all those millions on the same rooftop. I was going to spread them around some!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:18PM
Solar panels don't care about the agricultural characteristics of nearby land. Solar panels work well on rocky, drought-stricken land that won't even grow weeds [wikipedia.org] if that land gets sun.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:31PM
You're suggesting that just because want to yell "tricksy little hobbitses" instead of "get off my lawn".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:32PM (5 children)
The solar panels over your sod will prevent it from growing....
I want solar panels installed over the highways we commute on, to cut down on the solar heating of the roadway - cars run cooler, don't need as much (or any) air conditioning...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @07:01PM (2 children)
interesting idea. you could have free electric car recharge stations then too.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 21 2018, @10:37PM
Well, somewhere between free, "free + maintenance cost + labor costs, but subsidized", and "market value"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @03:32PM
There aren't many free electric cars to recharge. Recharge stations for expensive electric cars would probably be much more useful.
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Wednesday February 21 2018, @07:14PM (1 child)
The obvious issue is that the infrastructure to mount it (safely) above roadways is way more expensive, and it carries an implicit danger to the public should those supports fail, and barring accident depending on geography such supports could limit visibility in a hazardous way, though limiting visibility of adverts would be a welcome change to me if unwelcome to others.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday February 21 2018, @08:48PM
> though limiting visibility of adverts would be a welcome change to me if unwelcome to others.
Don't worry, they would just stick the adverts under the panel roof, slightly angled to always be in your field of view. Another bonus is a steady supply of electricity, so they can make the adverts light up and be animated. Think of the synergy! </sarcasm>
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @12:18AM
we've already given up tens of millions of acres of arable land
To take it 1 step farther:
The local college had a big uncovered parking lot.
In the summer, getting back into your car after it had been sitting in the sun for some hours was an unpleasant experience.
The lot now has a cover and that cover is coated with solar cells, turning "wasted" space into productive space.
...and the cars beneath it stay cooler. 2 birds; 1 stone.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:06PM (2 children)
The problem with this idea is that all the savings would probably go to the electric companies while they continue to charge us the same exact rate. If we install our own panels, we could save money in the long run on electric bills.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @07:21PM
yeah, that's what they want to do. use tax dollars to subsidize then the utilities get the savings. try to charge us for recycling the damn things too. just like they do everything else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @03:46PM
Never underestimate the creativity of governments when it comes to taking your money. For example, in Germany you have to pay for electricity that you produce for your own consumption: [noerr.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:09PM (5 children)
If it brings the price down to $0.05 per KW/h, it won't take force to get people to cover their rooftops. All it would take is a government program that turns the up-front cost into a monthly electric bill at $0.05 per KW/h.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:35AM (4 children)
There's also the perspective argument that energy companies are not in the coal burning business so much as in the energy business; it seems far fetched that it would be cheaper to install millions of small plants rather than one big corporate plant.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Thursday February 22 2018, @03:49AM (2 children)
For any plant based on a heat engine, a big centralized plant has a lot more opportunity to be efficient than a small plant, especially a plant small enough to supply a single home. OTOH, there's a lot less difference in efficiency between a house sized inverter and a massive industrial sized one and no difference in the PV cells. Meanwhile, by collecting the solar power at point of use, you avoid transmission losses.
The energy companies probably won't go away, but they may end up doing more storage than generation.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday February 22 2018, @01:51PM (1 child)
Sounds like a bad parody of Snowcrash but theres only three successful business models in the future
1) Convenience quickie mart
2) Gift giving
3) Insane massive financialization schemes based on the above
So the electric company of 2030, 2040, 2050 is going to be demand based billing where electric clothes dryer at 2pm is free on a sunny day because you have panels but 2am electric clothes drying will cost $10 per KWh inflation adjusted. So much like you can get junk food 24x7 from quikie-mart but it'll be super expensive, most people will get most of their KWh from their panels but 24x7 wattage will be available ... at a crazy price. Likewise Auntie never knows what to buy for Christmas so she'll go to the electric company store (no crazier than cellphone company stores... right?) and she'll buy me a electricity gift card of ten anytime rollover KWh for those cold winter nights, which is gonna be $100, pre-inflation adjusted. Meanwhile my investment portfolio will be nothing but derivatives of securities of startup bubble electricity marketing scams, just like everyone else.
Although the above was tongue in cheek the root is serious, the future is crazy high rates for night time demand based smart meter billing. Given the prices of all that infrastructure and financing to fund it, kerosene lanterns are likely to make a comeback...
This affects "us CS/IT guys" in that I predict by 2040 server farms will have daylight sensors and speeds will throttle down by a factor of a thousand or more when the sun sets... Data centers with megawatts consumed in the day, kilowatts consumed at night. In 2040 you get a 100 meg cable modem with a 5 gig use cap just like now, but it throttles down to 56K data rate at night.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday February 22 2018, @03:37PM
Except that electric company rates will be limited by the cost for it's customers to put in their own batteries or run their own generator. Data centers already have batteries and generators, so for them, the instant the power co wants more than the cost of diesel, the generators will get cranked up.
Since many homes are actually heated with gas or oil, they need just enough power to run the fan.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday February 22 2018, @06:31PM
I don't know what the grand policy should be, but keep in mind that a million roofs can be financed and implemented piecemeal, and as each individual roof is completed the power production for that roof starts immediately.
Politically, that's probably a lot easier to manage than getting the money and the complete construction finished for a large plant.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:11PM (13 children)
Water systems are often either electric or powered by fossil fuels. Solar panels make electric. Plug in your purifier?
Some people's goal is to replace nuclear, but the idea is to replace nonrenewable fuels with renewable or magic fuels.
The sun and wind are magic fuels in that they are providing energy all the time whether we tap it or not. If we could tap it, great. One day they will run down and expire--the magic isn't forever--but the nonrenewable fuels will probably run out* a long time (a long time on a geologic scale is an eternity in planning terms) before the sun does.
And fissionable material isn't inexhaustible, either, so it too could stand being replaced.
----------------------
* If you take exception to this statement, please carefully read the following: OIL WILL RUN OUT; GET OVER IT. It hasn't run out, we aren't "almost out," it is not an acute panic situation, but at the same time IT MUST RUN OUT if we use it faster than it is created, which we must do for it to be useful. If you reply with "But we have lots of oil!!" then you are an idiot. However many "lots" of it we have, and we do have lots, it will still run out. Your lots of oil, years of oil, hundreds of years of oil, etc., can't make it not run out.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by vux984 on Wednesday February 21 2018, @09:59PM (12 children)
"OIL WILL RUN OUT; GET OVER IT."
Will it? What about bio fuels? Isn't that basically oil? And isn't it basically solar? Using the suns energy to grow plant matter effectively storing the solar energy as hydrocarbons? Maybe instead of solar panels everywhere, we should work to increase efficiency and yields from bio fuel production? Maybe combine it with food production so that the waste after the harvest feeds the bio-fuel machine... perhaps fields of grain is better than fields of glass?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-solar, and I think solar development is terrific, but lets not pretend that oil is anything but solar by another route.
The issue I have with solar on every roof is overly optimistic cost and maintenance. A solar panel in a dedicated solar collection facility is going to be a lot more economical to run than on my roof. On my roof cleaning it is going to be a fairly labor intensive involving ladders and pressure washers. It's going to be screwed down through my shingles which is going to create new possible routes for water ingress and leaks -- and the periodic roof replacement and repair that will happen without or without panels on it will be much more complicated and expensive thanks to the solar panels. Replacing the panels themselves will be more labor, more in transportation, more per panel because I'm not buying them by the shipping container... etc. It is the most expensive possible way to do it.
Compare that to building a solar capture facility in some rocky desert like area, in a 10 thousand panel farm, with a dedicated onsite staff doing maintenance, storage sheds with all the replacement parts onsite, every panel oriented to make the absolute most of the sunshine, every panel easily accessible to the onsite crew with the appropriate trucks/cranes/scaffolding etc to facilitate maintenance and repairs.
If 20 panels need relacement a day, one 2 man crew can do them all. All the parts are on site. Everything is documented. Unplug it, Screws go out, panel goes down, new panel goes in, screws go in, plug it in...next. Optimal environment. Properly managed == More efficient in every respect.
If 20 panels scattered around my city need service per day... one crew might get through 2 or 3 in a day, between transportation, gaining access, talking to homeowners, getting bit by the dog, getting the right parts in since every roof was done a different year using a different model all the mounting equipment etc is slightly different, the wiring is all over the map, nothing that was done was documented.
And then it breaks 3 days later because the kids were playing baseball.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 21 2018, @10:27PM (7 children)
Biofuels can be oily, but they aren't "oil" in the sense that they aren't fossil fuels, but they *are* solar in the sense that yes, they are a delivery method of solar energy captured by plants. I think we should be doing development in both.
I dispute this not at all; rather, I am saying that we need to transition to fuels that we don't have to dig out of the ground. (Unless someone makes Thorium work; we have lots of that in comparison to other dig-out-of-the-ground fuel, and it isn't solar).
I have to agree with you here as well. The solar industry has essentially three types of installation:
There's a reason that rooftop solar is small in scale, and larger scale solar is in gardens or farms. I don't think there's any harm in running the numbers to see what large-scale rooftop solar would do for us (and 40% of the electrical grid at the very ideal maximum==not enough seems to be the answer in TFA), but you're right, the advantages of rooftop solar right now mostly outweigh the disadvantages.
Yeah. It still will. None of these words changed that. We are using it faster than it's being made. It's math.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:59AM (5 children)
"Yeah. It still will. None of these words changed that. We are using it faster than it's being made. It's math."
I guess if you are going to explicitly define modern biofuels as not being oil; despite beign the same hydrocarbon chains, then sure.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday February 22 2018, @05:36PM (4 children)
I can draw a distinction between fossil fuels manufactured in the distant past, with the energy already in it, that earth has a lot of, and modern biofuels we added the energy to, that were/are cooked in batches, recently. We get energy from one, and the other gets its energy from us. They're opposites in that respect.
We can look eye-to-eye and assume that they are not two different things; we can say "they use these hydrocarbon chains, so they are not just oils, they are the same thing." That would last until we observe that for Oil (capital O, the fossil fuel kind) the energy is already in there from sunlight heat and pressure, but with Biofuels, even though they are oily fuels, indeed are oil, we have to *put* the energy in there (if we want to just use the energy the Sun put in there, we must burn the switchgrass or corn or whatever raw material directly, putting us technologically back to the age of steam engines--to make oil out of them we have to add energy).
I submit that that's a meaningful difference between the two. Because I know this difference, I'm going to "explicitly define modern biofuels" as not being the same thing as Oil from fossil fuels, regardless of the final form each takes.
The advantage that Oil from fossil fuels has (the reason that we largely use it, instead of BioFuels) is that it already contains the energy, which was added long ago; we don't have to do anything but mine it/wildcat it/pump it up in a well, and then ship it to wherever it's needed, and use it, and the energy is ours.
When Biofuel oils run out (and they do, just like any other kind of oil that you intend to use up; this is the math part), you harvest some more raw materials, and put those raw materials together with energy and cook up some more Biofuel. You + Materials + Energy => Biofuel.
When Oil from fossil fuel sources runs out, it's gone. You have to stop using the Oil with the energy already in it, and if you want to still use oils, you have to start making Biofuel oils and putting the energy in there yourself. (Again, the Sun doesn't do it; you actually have to provide the energy that gets stored in the molecular bonds).
Fossil-fuel crude Oil, oils from Biofuel sources, both of these are fuels, energy storage media, and they will (this is so simple!) run out when burned up. That's their purpose. Their raison d'être.
If you have n quantity of something (whether 1 Earth's reserve of Crude Oil, or a tanker truck full of Biodiesel, or a BIC lighter full of lighter fluid), and your plan for it is to burn x amount of it per week, then after the first week you have n-x of it, and after the second week n-2x, after the third week n-3x, and so on until the product of weeks*x=n and you have n-n units of it. The most useful thing we can say about n-n units is "it ran out." This is the expected result.
That applies to fossil fuels, biofuels, firewood, paper, pine straw, hay, you name it. The math doesn't make exceptions here.
We can make more oil in the form of Biofuels, but we have to already have the energy in another form, and add that energy to raw materials to make more Biofuel.
And we do that *because* we ran out, not because it doesn't run out. If it didn't run out, there would be no need to make more. Your fuel tank would not have a removable lid. There would be enough fuel built into the engine for one firing cycle per cylinder, and this fuel-that-doesn't-run-out would just be burned over and over.
TL;DR: Your notion that there is some oil that never runs out seems to be really (inexplicably) common, but it's still wrong.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday February 23 2018, @04:28AM (3 children)
"If you have n quantity of something (whether 1 Earth's reserve of Crude Oil, or a tanker truck full of Biodiesel, or a BIC lighter full of lighter fluid), and your plan for it is to burn x amount of it per week, then after the first week you have n-x of it, and after the second week n-2x, after the third week n-3x, and so on until the product of weeks*x=n and you have n-n units of it. The most useful thing we can say about n-n units is "it ran out." This is the expected result."
That is overly simplistic. Clearly one can start with a pile of firewood, some land, and some seedlings and manage things such that each week you burn x units of firewood, and at the end of each year you have as much firewood as you started with, a healthy forest to draw it from, with new tress replacing the ones you took down, essentially indefinitely. You mocked wood burning, but wood is actually pretty sustainable, because forests can be a renewable resource; and effectively a solar powered one when you get to it.
Likewise there is nothing inherent to using biofuel that mandates that you use fossil fuels in their production. It may take 5 barrels of oil's worth of energy to produce one barrel of biofuel, but there's no reason that the 5 barrels worth of energy needs to be 5 actual barrels of oil. The energy input could be solar; and probably should be.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday February 23 2018, @03:28PM (2 children)
Solar, wind, something else renewable. People complain that you have to put the energy into Biofuels and about how much energy you have to put in, perhaps questioning Biofuel's utility given that you already have the energy, but that's, I believe, looking at it the wrong way. Biofuels are a way to make energy portable.
Large-scale solar power is useful when it's sunny. Large-scale wind power is useful when it's windy. Add batteries to them, and both are useful round-the-clock, but only in a single spot. Contrast this with large-scale Biofuel which is useful all the time, and what's more, it's portable (just like Oil-derived products that we currently use). That portability is huge--large-scale solar and wind aren't portable. Yes, energy has to be put into Biofuels, but energy had to be put into fossil fuels as well. The advantage is that you can carry around a fuel tank full in your car, truck, boat, ship, or airplane and draw on it any time you need it.
Well, I pointed out that it was steam-engine age technology, which it is. I didn't mean to mock it. Being steam-engine age technology doesn't mean it isn't useful--it's very useful. Plus, burning the wood means you are harvesting the solar energy collected by the trees (no need to put more energy into wood).
We have the technology to run, for example, trains and steamboats directly on wood (in place of the coal that they traditionally have burned), which nobody finds very useful just now, but which, I'll bet, will be deemed a lot more useful if we get to the point where wood+transporting the wood costs, say, half as much as fossil-derived oil+transporting the oil.
Of course, the reason we need the forest, and the axe, is that the wood runs out. Sure, n-x is an oversimplification, but it holds even if the rate varies, and even if you have a plan to replenish a fuel after it runs out.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday February 23 2018, @08:42PM (1 child)
It seems like we're coming around to the point where I'm not sure we actually really disagree on anything now.
I expect the reality will be somewhere in between. For example, pre-processing the wood in a solar plant into some sort of wood byproduct to increase its energy density, reducing the mass or volume that needs to be transported. Or perhaps also incorporating highly GM strains of tree to store more energy per unit volume... or perhaps it won't be trees but algae grown in ponds. Perhaps GM algae to increase the consistency and density and harvest-ability of their oils...
This seems like splitting hairs now. If the resource is managed and replenishment efforts meet or exceeds consumption then "n-x" and projecting the resource will be depleted becomes pretty meaningless. It's like projecting the extinction of cockroaches after counting how many the terminator swept out of a tented building. Well there were n cockroaches before he tented it, and he killed x cockroaches... but in the meantime globally n grew by 50x. So... yeah... the cockroach population isn't being depleted. Likewise, if you managed the forest properly, then as long as you are cutting trees down for firewood at a sustainable rate the forest isn't going to run out.
I think we're in general agreement here on how these systems work; and the only real dispute is whether it really makes semantic sense to say the resource will run out based simply on there being a consumption.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday February 23 2018, @11:06PM
The key is replenishment.
A finite resource, with consumption, will run out unless replenished.
This came up because it's an important difference between fossil fuels and (for example) Biofuel: Fossils can't be replenished except over geologic time. Biofuels can be replenished, but it's not a matter of the Sun magically making them, there is time, effort, and energy involved in the replenishment.
It's also an important equation because you have to consider what's involved in replenishment costs in determining suitability of a fuel.
Your well-kept forest/tree farm probably won't run out, but your woodpile certainly will, and it takes energy (fuel/labor) and time to replenish it from the forest.
Early on with Oil, people had the point of view that it was something that was inexhaustible. Now, (most) people are over that. That lesson is an important one, and if replenishment is to be an answer to the exhaustion of existing stocks of fuel (your woodpile, tanks of Biofuel, whatever) then it has to be considered. So when talking about the woodpile, you can't use handwaving and just say "oh, this forest will last." You don't burn the forest in your (fireplace/woodstove/boiler), you burn the fuel from the woodpile there, and the latter takes energy and time to harvest. If the Forest burns, it means something went wrong.
That's not semantics, it's time and money.
Monsanto and various courts are working to kill any benefit from GM plants. Monsanto with DRM and lawsuits, and the courts upholding Monsanto's screwy views.
The pattern is: Someone "licenses the right to use" Monsanto GM seed (you don't just buy it), then everyone around them gets their crops contaminated with Monsanto(tm) Cross-Pollination(tm) Contamination(tm) which makes their crops contain the DRM-protected Monsanto "Intellectual Property" without a license. Then Monsanto sues, and the courts uphold Monsanto's view. (Further Reading [naturalsociety.com])
A more reasonable view would be to tell Monsanto, if you don't want your crops spreading their characteristics, then engineer them to stop doing it, or accept that they do it. Don't go suing your victims.
For society to benefit from GM plants, either Monsanto or courts must be put out of business for the good of everyone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @03:59PM
But it still stores stellar energy; it's just not the energy of the specific star known as Sun.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:38AM (3 children)
Currently you gotta process or burn about five barrel equivalents of crude or veg oil to deliver a barrel of vegetable oil...
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:56AM (2 children)
Hey, I don't disagree. The biofuel system needs work to become net positive... ie worthwhile.
OTOH How much energy goes into the mining, materials refining, manufacturing, and delivery of a solar panel? I'm reading that it's also net negative right now, where more total energy goes into making them then they actually produce, and the fancy high efficiency new ones aren't necessarily better due to the refining costs of the more exotic metals and materials in them. I think it'll go positive, and it sounds like its further ahead than biofuel, but that could change with more research.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @04:06PM (1 child)
Where are you reading that? I'm reading the opposite. [phys.org]
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Thursday February 22 2018, @07:25PM
The first sentence in your own link: "The climate-friendly electricity generated by solar panels in the past 40 years has all but cancelled out the polluting energy used to produce them"
"all but" means "has not". ;)
As for these studies, its not really clear though what all they've considered. Do they go right back to resource gathering (mining and refining) or does the calculation start with 'manufacturing the actual panel' from raw materials. (ie from pouring silica into the furnace...) Are they only considering manufacturing; or are they looking at distribution, deployment, and maintenance too, for example. A lot of this stuff meaningless though, they're looking at panels made in the 70s and 80s mostly; is that representative Do they consider the construction and upgrades of the panel factories as well... etc. Also how much plastic are they using? And where is that plastic coming from?
But yeah, I read the whole article, and yes it claims maybe we actually have made them net positive... but it concedes in the first sentence that maybe not quite yet either.
I agreed all along that either way ahead of bio-fuels currently.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:11PM (3 children)
I could imagine a scenario in which 25-50% of all *new* American homes get solar roofing (ie. the product that Tesla and others are pushing that replaces traditional roof tiles). Maybe that will result in 5-10% of all usable rooftops being covered in solar panels. And to meet total U.S. energy needs, solar installations can be put in remote desert areas, and other forms of energy can be used (including natural gas, and eventually nuclear fusion).
We should also look at new forms of solar like space-based [wikipedia.org] (inb4 SC2K-style disaster).
There's no need to put solar on all skyscrapers unless it can be done on the sides/windows. Huge, flat structures like Tesla's gigafactory are better for solar.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:22PM (1 child)
A Walmart, Sams Club, Best Buy, Costco, or other big box retailer will have an incredibly higher ratio of rooftop space to inside square footage than any skyscraper, like Tesla's gigafactory does.
Difference being that there are few gigafactories, and many big-box retailers. Perhaps that could be a good place to start--Musk could approach one of the companies above and talk them into an agreement.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:36PM
Apparently, Musk (SolarCity) has been in touch with Walmart:
How Walmart is leveraging DERs for its 100% renewable energy goal [utilitydive.com]
Wal-Mart Leads the Nation in Corporate Solar Deployments. What Will It Do With Storage? [greentechmedia.com]
Target passes Walmart as top US corporate installer of solar power, Ikea lights 90%+ of stores [electrek.co]
Walmart has another thing they could put on their roofs: greenhouses. They don't even need to cover the whole roof or grow much produce, just stuff that grows quickly/easily and that people prefer to be fresh, such as heads of lettuce (45-55 days? [burpee.com]).
Innovation Earth: A Rooftop Farm, Coming Soon to Your Supermarket [huffingtonpost.com]
This High-Tech Vertical Farm Promises Whole Foods Quality at Walmart Prices [bloomberg.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 21 2018, @09:24PM
Mmmm... you like better a "die another day"-style disaster?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:24PM (2 children)
Nuclear power currently accounts for about 20% [eia.gov] of electric power generation in the US. They are proposing attempting to generate 40% from rooftop solar (and presumably more from other solar sources).
Sure, we could build 5x as many nuclear power plants and have "clean energy" that way, but the past 40 years pretty clearly says: we won't.
What I wonder about this rooftop solar calculation is: are they assuming that all rooftops will be covered? Including those shaded by trees?
My last 4 houses out of 5 have all had their roofs shaded by trees >60% of the day, which puts solar ROI pretty far out in the future for me - I'd like to do it, but the economics just aren't there, and cutting the trees would dramatically increase my total energy consumption.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 21 2018, @10:31PM (1 child)
They eliminated [arstechnica.com] rooftops from their numbers "if they were too small, too steep, north-facing, or otherwise would lose more than 20 percent of their possible solar output"
Tallish wind generators might work better at some of those locations than shady solar panels.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:17AM
Wind generators don't start working well until they clear the treetops, which in the SouthEast US means somewhere around 40' most places... that's a damn tall tower to put on a 1/4 acre subdivision lot.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:29PM (3 children)
I considered starting a wind farm in western Nebraska about 12 years ago, the big challenge is distribution - who in western Nebraska is going to pay you (much) for the power you would generate? T. Boone Pickens is making lots of wind energy in the Texas panhandle, but he's got the billions necessary to invest in upgrading the distribution grid from there to where the power consumers live.
If electric power distribution were cheap and easy, we'd all be buying our power from the Pacific Northwest where it's cheaply generated - but even relatively nearby Southern California can't get that to happen.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Wednesday February 21 2018, @06:47PM (1 child)
Blame the midwestern NIMBYs. And perhaps fossil fuel companies for stirring up opposition:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-bc-us--wind-turbine-rebellion-20180220-story.html [chicagotribune.com]
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:28AM
I think the NIMBYs are just posturing so they can take a bigger cut when they finally do relent and allow windmills to be built on the windiest land in the country. Everybody wants a cut, it's not enough for producers to produce and sell to consumers, you've got to have regulators in-between to make sure that everybody's pockets get lined as thickly as possible.
I'm not knocking regulations for safety, environmental responsibility, etc. but I am knocking the other 90% of regulations that are thinly veiled money-grabs. In Florida the worst of them are run by the big power company FP&L, protecting their business by making sure competitors aren't profitable.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday February 21 2018, @07:14PM
I think you over estimate the power potential of the Pacific Northwest. These resources are already stretched thin, with power companies and the federal government spending large sums on alternative sources, as well as end-user efficiency improvements. (Free Led bulbs and installation for your entire house, home energy audits and credits toward upgrades, etc).
Washington, Oregon, Idaho, really can't support much more than they do already. It doesn't rain 24/7 in the PNW no matter what' you've heard.
Now lets talk about Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, as well as parts of Colorado, Texas. Horizon to horizon scrub brush with no water. That's actually a bigger resource, with the same problem you mention. Distribution.
In fact Distribution and/or Storage are the LAST big issues for making renewable energy a reality in a large countries as well as small ones.
I think if the Federal Government wants to get involved some way, the creation of a nationwide DC Transmission Grid [theenergycollective.com] would be the proper venue. Linking all the dispersed resources more efficiently makes small projects like your Wind farm feasible.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday February 21 2018, @06:14PM (1 child)
Growing food is heavy compared to solar panels. You'd need to strengthen your foundations slightly and your support beams, etc.
OTOH, I'm not really convinced the apartment houses could generate a significant amount of their electricity by putting solar panels on their roofs. Once you get beyond single story the amount of roof per living space tends to get lower quickly...and the need for electric power increases. (OTOH, heating power/dwelling unit decreases. Possibly also cooling, but that really depends on you locale. But elevators, internal lighting, etc. go up.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @07:27PM
Rooftop farms would also require a lot of manual labor. I guess you could get a tractor up there if you really wanted to...
That's one of the reasons solar works better than most of the other options listed - you install it and forget it. The most comparable, water filtering (and collection I presume), has the drawback that the water would have run off and gone somewhere, reducing that runoff will have other consequences. Whereas the reduced solar energy on the roof is a pretty clear positive, reducing temperatures inside.
Which makes me wonder, are they including the rooftops in Alaska? All rooftops in the US aren't exactly equal...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Wednesday February 21 2018, @06:43PM
Well as others have pointed out, compounding the questionable land use choices of the past by forced bad land use choices in the future makes no sense at all.
Also your assertion that every roof top is THE BEST it could ever be. You don't have to get every roof top. There are a lot of other areas that could support solar without roofing over farm land.
The facts of the matter are that the investment needed to get solar (at any scale) put it out of reach of Joe Sixpack.
New home buyers don't have the pockets to do this without some kind of up front financing.
I'm not impressed with your argument that we should perpetuate the current large energy companies by having them turning farm land into industrial sites.
I'm equally unconvinced that raising the cost of housing another 20,000 is the best thing to do in the teeth of a perfect storm of homelessness.
I'm leery of rooftop leases, but that approach may be doable with proper protective legislation.
But if you insist on maintaining industrial grade solar installations, why not mandate every parking lot in every city be covered with raised solar farms? Those parking there will appreciate the shade, the land owner collects some solar production fees, etc. Then look into roof top collection on the big box stores that these parking lots serve as well.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:01PM (4 children)
Notably, the biggest barriers to cost reduction appear to be the stubborn "soft costs" of solar installation. Those soft costs include supply chain costs, labor costs, and sales and marketing costs that aren't related to the physical production of solar cells at a factory.
The only way NREL found it could achieve the "visionary" cost reductions was by assuming that solar installers would start selling low-cost solar-integrated roof tiles before 2030, "which could significantly reduce supply chain, installation labor, and permitting costs."
Yeah, gotta make sure the sales and marketing people get a huge cut while not contributing any real value, and don't forget the useless trolls at the local government too!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:37PM
The "soft costs" of wind power were a pretty quick turn-off for me. Spinning fees to the local municipalities for permission to operate your wind farm, permits, licenses, insurance. The overhead works out (by design) to just about exactly cancel all profits when operating at 100% efficiency.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday February 21 2018, @07:28PM (1 child)
Really?
How much solar was being installed on rooftops before sales and marketing CREATED THE MARKET for it?
Zero. None. Zip. (Ok, there was Roger blowing up old car batteries in his Yurt , with scavenged pieces and parts he found in The Whole Earth Catalog. Hippy marketing at its best.)
Exactly WHAT in this world gets produced in consumer quantities without some form of Sales and Marketing?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 21 2018, @08:12PM
I won't deny there's a certain amount of sales and marketing needed to get certain products into the market and make them popular. However, at this point, how much is needed to make solar roof installations a reality? If people want this stuff, they'll find those businesses on their own. For a more extreme example, how much sales and marketing does, for instance, a bag of rice need? Not much (just enough to devise a nice-looking package perhaps): if people want rice, they go to the grocery store and buy some. It's a cheap commodity product, and there isn't much point to advertising it.
The bigger issue IMO is just how much money is spent on it. Salespeople are generally paid way too much for the job they do. If the sales and marketing budget is a large fraction of rooftop solar, or anything else really, it's too much.
The main reason to have salespeople is to coerce people to buy shit that they otherwise wouldn't. If people already want something, you don't need salespeople, you just need to make it easily available to them, and supply them with the information they need to make informed decisions if your produce/service is more complex than "grab one and pay".
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Wednesday February 21 2018, @10:35PM
Good to hear you've finally made your peace with how the world works. Now accept it into your heart. Consider this new fact of the world, and how you might use it to make different (and probably better) decisions in your own best interest instead of making decisions on how you _wish_ the world operated.
Good to see another accept reality.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:03PM (5 children)
Some questions occur.
Is that every inch of residential rooftop that would provice 40% of the nation's power demand, or every inch of commercial, industrial, cultrual, residential, etc. roofing that would provide the 40%?
TFA offers us "you would produce about 1,400 terawatt hours of electricity each year—about two-thirds of which would come from small residential buildings. The total production is equal to nearly 40 percent of the total electricity currently sold by utilities in the US" after unsuitable building roofs (too small/steep/shaded) were discarded. I would guess that that includes all roofs, not just residential, but guessing's often a bad method.
What percentage of the nation's power is used by those buildings whose roofs we are planning to top with solar? 40%?
This is important because it determines whether they are generating excess power, just holding their own, or not even keeping up with their own energy needs. "The total production is equal to nearly 40 percent of the total electricity currently sold by utilities in the US" again from TFA is a nice figure, but "the electricity that US utilities sell" != That nation's power demand. Lots of power is bought and sold in other ways. How much? (I have no idea)
I know I pay retail 10c per kw/h for my home, but my electric utility buys a lot of that power from Duke Energy's nuclear plant a few miles north of here and so they surely pay a lot less than 10c/kw/h for it. If the solar was 5c per kw/h is that cheaper than the power we use now, or more expensive that the power we use now? By how much?
The eco-overeager assume the most optimistic answers without troubling about facts, the oil barons the most pessimistic with same terms. I'd rather look at what's actually facing us.
Solar is exciting in that it's getting cost-competitive with fossil fuels in many areas. Its cost really isn't energy cost so much as equipment and maintenance cost (because the sunshine is gratis).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:19PM (2 children)
Everything else would be energy negative.
High density residential because the roof square footage doesn't like up with the power consumption of the livable square footage.
Commercial/industrial/electric cars similarly, but also due to much denser energy demands.
I did calculations on the low density residential a few years back and a house and deep standalone 2 car garage provided enough roofspace for up to 20kW, depending on the surrounding terrain/flora maybe as low as 5kW out of the same panels. Having said that, even the 5kW number would be enough to provide emergency heating during the winter, and with the 20kW number, you would have enough to run basically everything in the house 24/7 plus have some left over for either charging an electric car, or running a shop out of the garage.
The real trick to solar power however is neither of those: It is the opportunity for energy independence from corporate/government control. With solar and wind it is now possible to run entirely off-grid, and so long as you don't install a Tesla powerwall, you should be safe from energy reporting telemetry.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 21 2018, @08:20PM
with the 20kW number, you would have enough to run basically everything in the house 24/7 plus have some left over for either charging an electric car, or running a shop out of the garage.
No, with a properly set up power grid that pays people properly for their excess, you'd put the excess electricity back on the grid for other customers to use and so the electric utility doesn't need to generate as much overall. Then when you start up a big power tool in your garage, it doesn't matter if there's some clouds overhead because the grid is supplying whatever your own panels can't at that instant. If you're consistently producing more power than you need, you end up getting a check from the utility every month, and your excess power goes to your neighbors who have too many trees, too many electric cars for their roof size, or to the high-rise a few blocks away.
Commercial/industrial/electric cars similarly, but also due to much denser energy demands.
It seems to me that a lot of commercial should be able to generate all or most of the power it needs, if not more, if it's retail. How much power does a Walmart need? It has a *huge* flat roof, there's only one story underneath, and all they need power for is lighting and HVAC, and some refrigerators in the grocery area. They're not running any industrial equipment in there (aside from the big HVACs), there isn't even an elevator. If anything, it seems like their energy usage per square foot of rooftop should be lower than a typical single-family home; maybe it isn't because the ceilings are very high and that requires a lot of HVAC.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 21 2018, @09:40PM
The true libertarians should salivate in anticipation of such a scenario.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday February 21 2018, @07:39PM (1 child)
What does that matter?
If you free up 40% of the power being consumed NOW, you can use that for electric cars.
The point is 40% more power is significant, as long as you can economically use it SOMEWHERE.
If not your house, then your neighbors. If not your neighborhood, then in somewhere in the same city, state, country.
If you can't economically use it anywhere you have built excess capacity. Poor planing, but not fatal to the over all discussion. There's no point in getting into micro-analysis here.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 21 2018, @08:00PM
soylent ate, and I missed in preview, the "Less than 40%? About 40%? Greater than 40%?" part of the question because I used < and > without escaping them somehow.
Even so, quoting the very next sentence:
What I was referring to was that where that number falls affects how you market it, and to whom, both issues of some import if a program promoting such unprecedented solar adoption is to be successful. I apologize for the >/< mix-up and for being (more) unclear as a result.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @06:16PM (5 children)
US Government Puts Tariffs on Imported Solar Cells, Solar Modules, and Washing Machines [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday February 21 2018, @07:46PM (4 children)
Had you read the discussion to which you linked, you would have seen that the proposal was indeed helpful.
Buying everything from China (where your warranty is worth exactly nothing) in NOT a good idea in a country
with a growing segment of its work force living under bridges while manufacturing jobs are shipped to china.
What exactly is your incentive to make some Chinese manufacturer paying slave wages wealthy?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 21 2018, @08:07PM
I am supposing here, and asking you for the flaw(s) in this logic: If Bob the Businessowner buys Chinese solar cells, he saves up-front cost and also is buying more frequent maintenance (unworkable warranty). Since he saved all that money, can't he hire a larger group of people to manage the solar installation?
I mean, the solar systems at Lowe's Home Depot Local Building Supply were tons more expensive than the ones on Alibaba....
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 21 2018, @08:25PM (2 children)
Buying everything from China (where your warranty is worth exactly nothing) in NOT a good idea
I fail to see how buying (crappy) appliances made in Mexico is any better than buying (nice, high-quality) appliances made in South Korea. Appliances are made in China, Korea, Germany, and Mexico these days. The "American" junk like Whirlpool is all made in Mexico, while "American" GE stuff is made in China. If you want good but expensive stuff, it's made in Germany (Bosch, Miele), and if you want good but not-as-expensive stuff, it's made in Korea (LG, Samsung).
So how again is taxing non-US products helping here? There's no such thing as an American made appliance. Are they exempting the Mexican-made junk? Why is it better to make some American manufacturer paying slave wages to Mexicans wealthy, than to make a Korean company paying good wages to Koreans wealthy, or a German company paying good wages to Germans wealthy?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday February 22 2018, @07:04AM (1 child)
But there are American made solar panels. Most of the progress in solar has been developed in the US.
The import tax simply recoups the tax break.
I don't see how washing machines enter into this discussion.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday February 22 2018, @03:28PM
I don't see how washing machines enter into this discussion.
Why not? That was the other giant thing that was part of this new tariff. It's just like the stupid tariff on VCRs back in the 80s: all the VCRs were made in Japan by the time the tariff was enacted, so all it did was double the price of VCRs for consumers.
The import tax simply recoups the tax break.
Now that most of the stuff is made in China, it's closing the barn door after the horses have escaped, and ends up just encouraging people to NOT install solar systems. Remember, the whole point of a tax is to punish something, and make people do less of it: a cigarette tax encourages people to not smoke, a gas tax encourages people to drive less, etc. If you want less of something, you slap a tax on it. Not that this is a bad thing in all situations (smoking is very bad, causing huge public health costs, for instance), but that's what taxes do. We should be taxing coal, not solar, even if we have to buy our solar panels from China because we were too stupid to do things well here.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday February 21 2018, @08:01PM (11 children)
Why does solar power need to be so much cheaper?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 21 2018, @08:12PM (9 children)
The thinking goes something like this.
Eventually nonrenewable fuels will price themselves out of the market due to scarcity. They have not, won't do so very soon, but will eventually.
Long before that happens, it would be good to have some sort of "plan b" in place that does not involve slave labor and draft animals.
Developing solar (or wind, or geo-something, or harvesting ions out of the upper atmosphere, or thorium, or room-temperature nuclear event harvesting, or zero point energy or whatever) to be a replacement for the nonrenewable fuels would be easier and easier if it costs less and less.
This works in a way that it doesn't for fossil-hydrocarbons, which perversely are depleted more quickly with lower prices.
Does this make sense?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday February 21 2018, @10:39PM
+1, Informative
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by stretch611 on Thursday February 22 2018, @12:57AM (6 children)
Zero point Energy?
Well if we have that tech, its safe to assume we have the stargate tech as well...
Then we can just go and get fossil fuels from other planets when we need... or move to the next planet when this one becomes a barren husk. ;)
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday February 22 2018, @01:45AM (2 children)
Yeah, "harvesting ions out of the upper atmosphere" is out of the science fiction of Murray Leinster, "room-temperature nuclear event harvesting" because it's impolite to say "cold fusion", and "zero point energy" now made with 25% more unobtainium.
Stargate tech was researched at Montauk, NY [rationalwiki.nom.pw] by the US Government (presumably without, or separately from, zero point energy, which a scary number of people believe in (search YouTube)), but the results have unfortunately not been made public.
I think most earth natives would rather, if we had the option, refurbish this planet than move to a new one. I am not sure which I would choose, to be honest, but I bet most would choose "let the scientists refurbish my home planet while I go about my daily affairs."
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday February 22 2018, @03:33PM
I think most earth natives would rather, if we had the option, refurbish this planet than move to a new one. I am not sure which I would choose, to be honest, but I bet most would choose "let the scientists refurbish my home planet while I go about my daily affairs."
Not in America. There, they believe "the scientists" are all part of an elaborate conspiracy to keep them from driving gigantic, smoke-spewing pickup trucks which God intended for them to drive in.
Anyway, if we could get to another somewhat-habitable planet feasibly, terraforming that is far easier than refurbishing this one. Doing the former is merely a technical challenge once you have the resources from somewhere (e.g., a cabal of billionaires?), while doing the latter is nearly impossible because of politics. It's the same reason you see small teams or companies out-innovating huge companies, and small countries able to make large social or infrastructural improvements internally on a short timescale while the US is completely crippled.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday February 24 2018, @11:23AM
It's not just Star Trek - if we are to get to the stars, our ship will be powered by antimatter.
Last I read, CERN made some antiprotons slow down enough that they could be trapped in a magnetic bottle - but not for very long.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday February 22 2018, @03:36PM (1 child)
Zero point Energy?
Well if we have that tech, its safe to assume we have the stargate tech as well...
No, not necessarily. Finding a new energy source (that requires new physics maybe) is somewhat different than finding a way of moving matter instantly between different star systems in the galaxy. We could very well figure out how to harness quantum fluctuation energy long before we figure out how to open stable wormholes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @04:15PM
Using an energy source that by its very definition cannot be used is definitely less likely than a star gate (that at least doesn't violate the laws of logic).
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Thursday February 22 2018, @05:17PM
Hey don't knock professor Casimir [wikipedia.org]!
He never managed to find any practical applications for his theories during his lifetime, but I wouldn't rule out that we can harvest microscopic amounts of energy from sufficient amounts of nothing somehow.
Maybe one day some clever person can combine the zero-point energy [wikipedia.org] idea with that new theory from last year that gravity doesn't really exist, but is an extrinsic property of the system of our universe, a bit like centrifugal force can be measured but is just an improper viewing of centripetal force.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Thursday February 22 2018, @04:29PM
Also, many of those petrochemicals would be put to better use making plastics, tires and such instead of burning them. So if you can undercut the cost of burned petroleum electricity you reduce pollution (solar isn't perfect), free up the petroleum for it's other uses and reduce the economic burden of producing power which frees that wealth up for some other purpose.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:42AM
3.16 cents to design provision and work around some kind of solution for electricity at night
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday February 21 2018, @09:53PM (1 child)
My roof is unfortunately not exposed to the sun due to enormous organic recycling machines that were installed into the yard decades ago.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 22 2018, @03:53AM
Put them in the treehouse.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]