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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday April 19 2017, @07:11PM   Printer-friendly

Meanwhile, a report from Scottish Renewables suggests that onshore wind farms could compete subsidy-free in the UK, as long as they were allowed to take part in the country's competitive auction process. (Known as contracts for difference, or CfD, the competitive auction process does not currently include onshore wind.)

Finally, while the loss of incentives and tax credits might have less impact than it once did—thanks to ongoing cost reduction and technological improvement—we are right to be concerned that political obstructionists can still do a lot of damage to the future of renewables. (The exclusion of wind from the aforementioned CfD process in the UK is one example.) But here too, there are signs of progress—because oil giant Shell is lobbying for the Dutch government to quadruple its offshore wind target for 2030 to an installed capacity of a whopping 20 gigawatts (GW). As Shell joins the likes of Statoil—which recently quit tar sands in favor of offshore wind—the shift of political and lobbying power starts to shift.

More signs that the pivot point in the energy economy is upon us.


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @07:33PM (14 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @07:33PM (#496503)

    If energy can be stored effectively, then all of the problems with "renewable" energy go away.

    The one amazing feature of fossil fuels is that they are an amazing store of energy—one that can be transmitted and handled with relative ease.

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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:05PM (7 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:05PM (#496518) Journal

    If energy can be stored effectively AT LARGE SCALE, then many problems of renewable energy go away.

    But what if you have a prolonged period of no sunlight reaching the Earth surface? Say twenty years or so?

    This would greatly diminish the effectiveness of solar power. It seems likely to have an effect upon wind power as well.

    So you need storage both at large scale and ability to store so much that you can tap into it over a long time until nuclear winter is over.

    Of course, coal would be a solution. And would put the coal miners back to work. Just sayin'

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 5, Touché) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:10PM (6 children)

      by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:10PM (#496521)

      I think if the sun stopped working for 20 years, ineffective solar power would be the least of our problems.

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:26PM (4 children)

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:26PM (#496528)

        Probably talking about cloudy days.

        A lot of people don't realize that cloudy days are still very bright, sure noon sunlight is who knows like 6 times the watts/sq-whatever but its hardly zero.

        Then consider the cost of a watt on the roof drops somewhere between 5 and 10 percent a year.

        now combine them and insert a lot of MBA hand waving and the "true cost" of a cloudy day is brand new 2017 panels on my roof would perform at the same output at an equal amount of dollars of panels installed in 2009 or something like that. So $10K of solar panels installed today on a cloudy day will make as many KWH despite the clouds as $10K of panels installed in '09 at noon on a sunny day. Crazy times.

        I find it fascinating that a "really large array" like an entire residential roof supposedly pumps out enough watts from the full moon to easily electrocute a dumb experimenter. You can't just wait till the sun sets and start Fing around with replacing inverters and rewiring stuff because moonlight is supposedly powerful enough using cheap modern panels to kill. I find that interesting not just in some macabre sense but in that I only need 5 watts to run a rasp-pi so the idea of running a pi off moonlight is kinda cool. I suppose during the new moon I'd be screwed and during full moon, in addition to fighting off werewolves, I'd have too much power to run just the pi, I guess I could charge batteries...

        • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday April 19 2017, @09:27PM

          by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday April 19 2017, @09:27PM (#496563)

          Since the sun is about 400,000 times brighter than the full moon, a large 1kW (in noon sun) solar panel will produce only around 2.5mW by the light of the full moon. So you'd need 2000 such panels to generate 5W of power from moonlight. And at 1kW we're probably talking about a single panel being roughly 3m^2 - so we'd be talking 6000m^2 of panels, or a square roughly 77m across.

          It might still be true that you can electrocute yourself working on a solar array at night, but that would have more to do with the fact that, with some bad luck, it takes only micro-amps to stop the heart. As well as the fact that (as I understand it) the control electronics for quality solar panels will automatically "correct" their output so that large numbers of panels can be combined without limiting their productivity to that of the least-productive panel. Or even more likely, once you start messing around with inverters, etc. you're likely dealing with battery-backed (or grid tied) electronics that will mostly be receiving full power regardless of what the solar panels are currently (not) generating.

        • (Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday April 19 2017, @09:33PM (2 children)

          by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Wednesday April 19 2017, @09:33PM (#496565)

          I call bull-shit on moonlight killing somebody. Though 20mA at 400V is only 8W.

          Electricity From Moonlight (Cody's Lab -- 5:01) [youtube.com]

          Can moon light produce electricity from solar panels at night? Can moon light generate the electron-hole pair in a solar cell? [quora.com]

          Moonlight can be used to power PV cells at cost of 345:1. That is, a panel that would normally produce 3450 W at high noon would produce only 10 W of power during the full moon. The quarter moon (50% illumination) would likewise produce only 5 W, and so forth.

          So like the story of the guy killing himself with a multimeter (measuring internal resistance), it is in the realm of physical possibility, but you would have to work at it.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @06:09AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @06:09AM (#496715)

            > I call bull-shit on moonlight killing somebody.

            Look who you are replying too.
            The guy's entire world is bullshit.
            I'm VLM probably thinks he himself died from moonlight electrocution.

          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday April 23 2017, @01:13PM

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 23 2017, @01:13PM (#498310)

            Here's experimental results from your link of enough current to stop a heart (A LED is enough current to stop a heart, under perfectly non-ideal conditions)

            Phil Hirsch
            Written Apr 25, 2016

            I have tried it, and the answer is yes. Not much electricity to be sure, but a solar panel that's rated at 50 watts produced enough current to light up a red LED. I didn't measure the current and I don't know how many LED's I could have connected -- I only tried with a single LED, just to see if there was any current at all -- but the answer is definitely yes.

            That dude used a 50 watt panel, I'm talking about doing maintenance on arrays of, say, 4x5=20 100 watt panels, so 2 KW vs 50 watts.

            I suspect an interesting contaminant is urban skyglow, perhaps streetlamps.

      • (Score: 2) by NewNic on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:32PM

        by NewNic (6420) on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:32PM (#496530) Journal

        You mean like weather in the UK? Have you seen the number of solar panels on roofs in the UK?

        --
        lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:08PM (4 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:08PM (#496520) Journal

    As for storage of energy at small scale to be transmitted and handled with ease, it seems to me that electric car battery tech is improving continuously.

    At some point eliminate most fossil fuel use with electric vehicles once there is a sufficiently developed charging infrastructure. Sort of like having fossil fuel stations on every street corner.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:34PM (3 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:34PM (#496531)

      I was into sailing when I was younger and the concept of solar panel powering a boat trolling motor is tantalizingly close to working but not quite there technologically.

      Just like another doubling of power density and I could run an electric cruising boat across the ocean.

      Its not entirely trivial because seawater destroys everything metallic and everything electronic so the odds of getting my dumb ass stranded in the middle of the pacific are excellent, and there are center of gravity issues with heavy panels, etc.

      But... just a little more work on efficiency and I could build an electric cruising boat that operates by solar panels not sailcloth and wind.

      In practice I'd end up doing both. At night I could get maybe 6 knots off the sails, on a windless sunny day I could get maybe 6 knots, on a windy sunny day who knows at least 7 knots maybe 8.

      There are a lot of sailboats with 100 watts of solar panels because the panels output more power and require less weight and maintenance than a generator, but they're using their panel to run the radar or AIS transmitter or the skipper is watching pr0n or its running the lights at night, its not for main engine drive which takes a couple HP.

      • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday April 19 2017, @09:43PM (1 child)

        by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday April 19 2017, @09:43PM (#496570)

        Do you have LOTS of cash?
        If yes, the market already has anwsers: http://www.solarwave-yachts.com/english/yachts/solarwave-64-sailor/ [solarwave-yachts.com]

        • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @11:27PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @11:27PM (#496605)

          The-market already-has answers, I-think-you-must-mean.

      • (Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday April 19 2017, @09:50PM

        by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 19 2017, @09:50PM (#496573)

        There are a lot of sailboats with 100 watts of solar panels because the panels output more power and require less weight and maintenance than a generator

        Seen similar things with RVs. It's a really cool conversion. Makes me want a solar powered shed or something.

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        SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday April 20 2017, @04:30AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Thursday April 20 2017, @04:30AM (#496688) Journal

    I concur with the statement that storage or at least smoothing power differences over time is the key to really make use of wind and solar. In the meanwhile such power sources will make the power grid unstable and in some cases require shunting the power to a plain heater.

    There's wave power at sea to be had to.