[HN Gopher] We're going to need a lot of solar panels
___________________________________________________________________
We're going to need a lot of solar panels
Author : lionheart
Score : 107 points
Date : 2022-07-22 20:54 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (caseyhandmer.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (caseyhandmer.wordpress.com)
| [deleted]
| someweirdperson wrote:
| > "Our process works by using solar power to split water into
| hydrogen and oxygen, concentrating CO2 from the atmosphere, then
| combining CO2 and hydrogen to form natural gas."
|
| That's a pretty artificial form of natural gas.
| standardUser wrote:
| Can anyone provide a summary of this blog post? I am finding it
| strangely tricky to follow.
| jtolmar wrote:
| Terraform Industries has a process for converting atmospheric
| CO2 and water into hydrocarbons (particularly "natural" gas),
| at the cost of a huge amount of electricity.
|
| Because solar panels keep getting cheaper and oil doesn't, they
| think they can out-compete the cost of oil in some markets
| (sunny with expensive oil) in the near future, and more places
| over time if solar power keeps getting cheaper.
|
| The author hopes to encourage a huge investment in solar power,
| which would be good for the planet and people in general (and
| unstated, also Terraform's bottom line).
| ku-man wrote:
| osigurdson wrote:
| >> but the energy demands are astronomical
|
| Maybe not the best idea then.
| akira2501 wrote:
| A monoculture of generation and distribution technologies is not
| a desirable outcome from an engineering perspective. Your goal
| shouldn't be to put PV everywhere and then just "solve the
| distribution problem." You're almost certainly going to make
| things worse that way.
|
| Also.. if you have excess residential electrical supplies, I'd
| think a good goal would be to get electricity to the people that
| don't have it first, rather than imagining new industrial
| processes that rely on continued excesses to function.
|
| It all smacks of thinking that the Earth is a giant inconvenient
| ledger that just needs to be balanced, at any cost, apparently.
| gregschlom wrote:
| It sounds like you didn't read the article. They aren't talking
| about putting solar panels everywhere, they're talking about
| using massive amounts of solar panel in a specific location and
| use the energy to convert the CO2 in the air into methane.
| akira2501 wrote:
| This is such an odd way to address an argument. From the
| article:
|
| "Substituting solar power into our electrical grid and
| atmospheric CO2-derived hydrocarbons into our fuel supply
| chain is just the beginning. We want to support a future of
| abundance and wealth, while avoiding starvation even as
| legacy climate damage shifts rainfall patterns and causes
| extreme weather."
|
| Seems pretty one-track to me.
|
| Also, there are no manufacturing processes with infinite
| scalability. And the article fails to make clear their large
| scale intentions. They go back and forth between some Sarahan
| style plant, and the total amount of PV available and the
| current planned excess power due to this and never offer a
| solid plan as far as I can tell.
|
| Aside from that.. it's a back of the envelope analysis that
| just projects trend lines on charts and makes no thoughts for
| emergent phenomenon due to the massive market swings it
| projects.
| adamrezich wrote:
| > it's a back of the envelope analysis that just projects
| trend lines on charts and makes no thoughts for emergent
| phenomenon due to the massive market swings it projects.
|
| seems like there's a lot of this going around recently
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| That and nobody has ever suggested that we rely solely on
| solar for energy needs. Wind, for example, is cheaper than
| solar (though solar is catching up.)
| jshen wrote:
| Wind and solar both need to be combined with something else
| because it's not always sunny and windy.
| outworlder wrote:
| If we forget about where the power is coming from for the moment,
| wasn't the US Navy experimenting with fuel synthesis? Did that go
| anywhere?
|
| A nuclear powered carrier has no use for fuel itself, it only
| stores fuel for aircraft operations. Having the ability to make
| fuel on site with all the excess cheap electricity seems to be a
| game changer.
|
| Wondering what happened to it. That is the latest I can find:
| https://www.autoevolution.com/news/us-navy-aircraft-carriers...
|
| 300k grant? That's peanuts for something that has incredible
| potential.
|
| Obviously, I'm looking at future civilian applications for the
| tech.
| user-one1 wrote:
| You should check out Prometheus Fuels:
| https://prometheusfuels.com/
| beambot wrote:
| A project related to the Navy project was "Project Foghorn" at
| GoogleX: https://x.company/projects/foghorn/
|
| A better technology is currently being scaled up at Prometheus
| Fuels: https://www.science.org/content/article/former-
| playwright-ai...
| martyvis wrote:
| Porsche are on to it.
| https://newsroom.porsche.com/en_AU/2022/sustainability/porsc...
| woah wrote:
| Is this better or worse than the one where they are cooking corn
| husks to make oil to squirt into the ground?
| bullfightonmars wrote:
| These are orthogonal concepts this is an attempt to create a
| carbon neutral hydrocarbon for energy use, the other is an
| attempt at carbon negative sequestration.
| AdamTReineke wrote:
| This is better. Terraform believes they can make methane from
| the air for cheaper than it can be extracted from the ground,
| leading to a preference for "carbon neutral" fuels. Part of
| their thesis though is the requirement for solar to keep
| getting cheaper and cheaper (as it has).
|
| Excess manufactured methane could also be injected underground,
| presumably.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| What's a more efficient way to split water into hydrogen and
| oxygen: using electricity from a solar panel or using
| photosynthesis in a plant?
| outworlder wrote:
| That is a good question.
|
| Do you have any uses for the plant, or does it create
| interesting byproducts for you? Photosynthesis is not very
| efficient, but it is great at making complex organic
| molecules like sugar or cellulose.
|
| But a plant needs more than power. It needs nutrients,
| usually in the form of fertilizer.
|
| They also don't generally make hydrogen, not directly at
| least.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Electrolysis is orders of magnitude more efficient, but
| your equipment isn't self replicating.
| leobg wrote:
| What would interest me: Can I do this locally, at the site of the
| consumer? Take the unused PV output of my house in summer to fill
| my house's tank with natural gas for use in winter? Is that
| something that would be technically feasible today?
| walrus01 wrote:
| We're going to need a lot of solar panels _and_ an efficient way
| to transport power from a very sunny place to another location
| where the loads are.
|
| For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie
|
| The pacific DC intertie right now often ends up being used to
| transport power from hydroelectric dams in WA/OR _to_ California.
| But there 's nothing to say that something couldn't function the
| other way if there was enough willpower and budget to cover, for
| instance, a huge chunk of the desert near Edwards AFB in CA with
| hundreds of megawatts of photovoltaics.
|
| I searched for "high voltage DC" in that article and didn't see a
| mention of it, or anything much else about long distance
| transport of power.
|
| The technology now exists to theoretically cover many hundreds of
| square km of Libya in photovoltaics and take the electricty to
| Europe through a sub-sea cable, or series of cables. It's a
| matter of the political will and budget to do it.
|
| https://powertechresearch.com/the-worlds-longest-submarine-h...
| thejarren wrote:
| Just to add to this conversation a bit, did you know Singapore
| is running power wires to gather solar from Australia?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| walrus01 wrote:
| I read the article, I disagree with the concept of using PV
| to generate artificial hydrocarbon fuels in general, as not a
| great business plan. It's not the best use of the technology
| when we should be bypassing that entirely.
|
| Go use excess PV to pump water uphill back into a reservoir
| or something if you need energy storage, not drive a
| complicated process to make artificial hydrocarbons to store
| in a tank and burn in an engine.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Pumped reservoir storage is horrifically inefficient,
| environmentally terrible for the local ecosystem, and not
| scalable. You can't just go and build a reservoir anywhere
| you like.
|
| Chemical energy storage is simple, scalable, and allows for
| the easy movement of vast amounts of energy over great
| distances to be used anywhere with minimal changes to
| existing infrastructure.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| When talking about pumped hydro the roundtrip efficiency
| usually is around 70-80%. Not even close to batteries but
| way more scalable.
|
| Chemical storage is horrific. Creating diesel and burning
| it in a turbine or similar you start at 40-50% for the
| burning phase, without even converting anything in the
| first place.
|
| If you go the fuel cell route you tend to end up
| somewhere at 40-60% efficiency.
|
| So no, the only use case for chemical storage is either
| where you want energy density. Say aviation or maritime
| shipping. Or nation state like energy security, where you
| can pay the efficiency price.
|
| For all other use cases any optimization done, or better
| usage of the energy, will eat into that horrific round
| trip efficiency.
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| Until energy density of batteries improves by a couple
| orders of magnitude, we're at least going to need
| hydrocarbons to fly planes, no?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Density is almost irrelevant, all that matters here is
| cost.
|
| And one order of magnitude is more than enough. But yeah,
| besides planes and rockets, hydrocarbons are important in
| several industrial processes. Besides, we don't want to
| replace all of the cars, trucks and ships in a single
| decade.
| walrus01 wrote:
| _maybe_ , but it's also a national embarrassment that
| most of the major population centers in the US Northeast
| seemingly cannot be connected by 350 km/h high speed rail
| such as what China has very rapidly built since 2010.
| Flights of 1-2 hour duration between many locations in
| North America should be replaced with rail in most
| scenarios.
|
| either the political will or budget to do this apparently
| does not exist.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China
| ben_w wrote:
| Not necessarily, we could use plain hydrogen. (Could
| probably even do it with beamed power, but that's a tech
| I consider to be insanely unwise to deploy).
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Probably going to be the last thing to decarbonize.
|
| Might be able to run off biodiesel or similar. Even if
| biofuel is double the cost of current dino juice, fuel
| makes up 20-40% of major airline's opex, so it's not like
| crude-free flying will kill the industry.
|
| Might even be made up with increased aircraft efficiency,
| more intermediate stop operations (saving 15-30% in fuel
| by flying 2x medium haul instead of 1x long haul) and
| better load factors ("revenue management").
| jjk166 wrote:
| Biodiesel is just hydrocarbon fuels produced via solar
| energy with extra steps
| _mhr_ wrote:
| I've never made a comment on HN commenting on someone else's
| tone, but I've seen this exact response, word for word, a lot
| recently on many posts. I don't like this trend. I find it to
| be adversarial and in bad faith. Suppose they did read the
| article. Are they likely to reply to you defending
| themselves? Next time, please address the actual content of
| their comment instead.
| bequanna wrote:
| > The technology now exists to theoretically cover many
| hundreds of square km of Libya in photovoltaics and take the
| electricty to Europe through a sub-sea cable
|
| Climate benefits aside, how in the heck is this an improvement
| over the current situation?
|
| Long-term I really don't think it is prudent for Europe to rely
| on potentially unfriendly nations to provide them with energy.
| walrus01 wrote:
| realpolitik would tell me that a scenario where europe was
| highly dependent on libya (or morocco, or other north african
| countries) for electricity would be vastly preferable to a
| scenario being dependent upon russia for gas pipeline
| supplies.
|
| if sufficiently threatened europe could summon enough
| political will to require libya to do its bidding through
| threat of sanctions and adverse action against it, worst
| case, military force to set up a cooperative libyan puppet
| regime. the balance of the size of the economies and
| population of western europe as a whole vs libya is very
| different than western europe vs russia.
|
| not exactly something that can be done with a nuclear armed
| state the size of russia.
| silvestrov wrote:
| There is sun enough in Spain and Italy (and even France and
| south Germany) that we don't need Morocco/Libya.
|
| Also: heat and dusty environments are really bad for
| efficiency. Better with a place where it rains once in a
| while.
|
| Today at 13:00 more than 38% of electricy in Germany was
| produced by solar panels!
| https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE
| walrus01 wrote:
| that is a very good point and _of course_ as much as
| possible should be generated domestically first.
|
| If you open a high res aerial view of any random french
| or german city right now and look at the roofs of how
| many warehouses and huge structures are presently covered
| in PV, versus how many _could_ be covered in PV if we
| really wanted to, for instance.
| ku-man wrote:
| conradev wrote:
| > if there was enough willpower and budget to cover, for
| instance, a huge chunk of the desert near Edwards AFB in CA
| with hundreds of megawatts of photovoltaics.
|
| One such project being built currently:
| https://www.mortenson.com/projects/edwards-sanborn-solar-plu...
|
| More notable than the 950MW generation is the 2400MWh of
| batteries
| metalliqaz wrote:
| But the point of this article is that they extract carbon from
| the air to make hydrocarbon fuel, which can be transported
| using our existing infrastructure...
| l1n wrote:
| Because their value prop is to generate synthetic fuel instead.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| You need synthetic fuel anyway to act as energy
| storage/buffer.
| jonatron wrote:
| https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ not Libya, but
| Morocco.
| ben_w wrote:
| A global grid was my favourite solution until recently. The
| problem is that it needs the combined cables to have cross
| section in the order of a few (3?) square meters (at 640 kV),
| and that in turn is in the order of 52 years of global copper
| production (we make more aluminium than copper but Al is a
| worse conductor).
|
| Using even higher voltages makes everything much easier, and
| the cables' combined cross sections may need to be less
| (depending on how much lower the maximum demand at night is) or
| more (depending on future increases in daytime demand).
|
| Downside is that's still order-of a few trillion dollars, close
| to the same as the cost of 36 TWh of batteries (i.e. global
| overnight only), and we're likely to make those batteries
| anyway for the electric cars and when their condition
| deteriorates enough to be taken out of the cars they're still
| good enough for grid storage.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I don't know of any long distance HV AC or DC transmission
| lines that use copper. It's all aluminum already.
| adaml_623 wrote:
| The good news is that humanity has saved up a few trillion
| for emergencies. The bad news is that it's been saved up and
| hidden in tax havens. Pity
| phkahler wrote:
| >> I searched for "high voltage DC" in that article and didn't
| see a mention of it, or anything much else about long distance
| transport of power.
|
| Since they want to use solar/electricity to produce hydrocarbon
| fuels, there is no need to transport electricity. Make the
| fuels where the sun shines. Maybe build a pipeline or two out
| of the desert.
|
| I think it might be viable for aircraft even if ground
| transport eventually goes all electric.
| jp57 wrote:
| But it seems they need places with ample sunshine _and_ water
| to electrolyze. That rules out the American west, the Sahara,
| etc. If they can use seawater, then arid coastal areas could
| work.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| HVDC or interconnects (losses are tolerable with enough
| renewables generation, considering existing curtailment),
| battery storage, and renewables generated ammonia for on demand
| combustion (chemical storage) will meet these needs. "Build,
| Baby, Build", with my apologies to Sarah Palin.
|
| Edit: with 1200GW of renewables capacity, the US has produced
| 20% of its energy from renewables this year, more than nuclear.
| Based on the interconnect queue, extrapolate future generation
| mix accordingly.
|
| https://www.publicpower.org/periodical/article/renewables-do...
|
| > There was a total of 1,400 gigawatts (GW) of capacity in
| interconnection queues across the country as of year-end 2021,
| of which 1,300 GW was solar, wind and energy storge capacity,
| according to the report, Queued Up: Characteristics of Power
| Plants Seeking Transmission Interconnection. The installed
| capacity of the United States is 1,200 GW.
|
| > Although not all the projects are likely to reach fruition,
| the total still represents a milestone. "The sheer volume of
| clean energy capacity in the queues is remarkable," Joseph
| Rand, a senior scientific engineering associate at LBNL, said
| in a statement. "It suggests that a huge transition is
| underway, with solar and storage taking a lead role."
|
| https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/queued_up_2021_04-13...
| walrus01 wrote:
| If the $ per Wh cost from PV is extremely low it's also
| possible to use electrical heating elements to store heat in
| tanks of something that melts and stays hot for long periods
| of time (for building heating purposes).
|
| Or to use cheap mid day electric power when the sun is up to
| generate gigantic blocks of ice that can then be used with
| cooling loops to air condition buildings.
| thatcherc wrote:
| One of my favorite high(ish)-concept energy storage
| proposals takes the "store heat in tanks of something that
| melts and stays hot for long periods of time" is the "sun
| in a box"[0] idea: use excess electricity to heat silicon
| up to an incandescent 4500 deg F. Later, when you want to
| extract the store energy, just shine some of that
| incandescent light into some super efficient multi-junction
| solar panels!
|
| Sounds pretty wild but apparently scales up very well
| thanks the to square cube law.
|
| [0] - https://news.mit.edu/2018/liquid-silicon-store-
| renewable-ene...
| NavinF wrote:
| > electrical heating elements
|
| Very inefficient compared to heat pumps or even peltiers
| for that matter.
|
| > store heat in tanks
|
| Oh I already do something similar at home for sub-ambient
| cooling but I wouldn't call it cheap.
|
| > If the $ per Wh cost from PV is extremely low
|
| IMO this is roughly equivalent to saying "assume that you
| could clone dinosaurs, and that you could fill a park with
| these dinosaurs, and that you could get a ticket to this
| 'Jurassic Park,' and that you could stroll throughout this
| park without getting eaten, clawed, or otherwise quantum
| entangled with a macroscopic dinosaur particle": https://sc
| holar.harvard.edu/files/mickens/files/thisworldofo...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Absolutely. California alone is curtailing enormous amounts
| of renewables, hundreds of thousands of MWh/month
| (depending on the season). That is literally clean energy
| being thrown away (which, depending on system design, is
| variably tolerable; you're balancing cost, transmission
| congestion, and renewables offsetting fossil combustion).
| More transmission, more batteries, more storage, more load
| shifting (both temporal and geographic)? All of the above.
|
| https://www.caiso.com/informed/Pages/ManagingOversupply.asp
| x
| worik wrote:
| > and an efficient way to transport power from a very sunny
| place to another location where the loads are
|
| The point of the article is to make synthetic hydrocarbons, so
| no, do not need HVDC so much.
| walrus01 wrote:
| My point was that maybe we should transport the electricity
| to where it needs to be used over high voltage long distance
| lines, rather than running an artificial hydrocarbon fuel
| generation process, storing it in tanks or pipelines, and
| then sending it to where it needs to be used, and feeding it
| into combustion engines.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| On one hand it's an interesting engineering challenge, but I am
| always perplexed how covering hundreds of square km of an
| ecosystem with glass is "good for the environment". It sounds
| like something future generations will shake their heads at
| while trying to dispose of all the toxic waste.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I'm not saying pave over the mojave desert with PV, exactly,
| rather that a dry salt pan or ecosystem that has an absolute
| minimum of flora and fauna would be preferable.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorheic_basin
|
| creating massive hydroelectric dam reservoirs also has
| ecological costs
|
| in terms of toxic waste it would surely be preferable to the
| percentage of electricity right now that is generated using
| gas, heavy fuel oil and coal.
| StrictDabbler wrote:
| Unfortunately the inhabitants of the Mojave turned down a
| major solar power project last year because of ecological
| disruption", aka "this wouldn't be pretty on our nature
| hikes."
|
| Perhaps we can use the Salton Sea? It is at least
| acknowledged as a truly destroyed ecosystem.
| [deleted]
| goethes_kind wrote:
| Matter of interpretation. Is humanity at all good for the
| environment? Some would say no. Solar is clean and deserts
| are mostly, well, deserts. And climate change seems much
| worse than having a tiny bit of our deserts being used for PV
| farms.
| rektide wrote:
| It'a really weird but there's a surprisingly growing base of
| farming amid a solar farm, where apparently many plants just
| cant stand the pure sun & benefit from some periodic shade
| during the day. I dont know how much I believe it but
| combined agriculture/solar use seems perhaps legit to be a
| thing.
|
| Also, solar panels dont seem that difficult to recycle.
| There's already a decent & growing reclaimation market.
| bilsbie wrote:
| You just space them out a bit and life will thrive all around
| them. A lot of species will appreciate the shade.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Hundreds of square km is not a lot, and the ecosystems where
| these systems would be installed are typically not rich
| havens of life. The US's power consumption would require
| about 6000-9000 sq km of solar panels (assuming ~15%
| efficiency) For comparison in the US there are about
| 13000-33000 sq km of parking lots, 93000 sq km of alfalfa
| cultivation, 69000 sq km of fallow agricultural land, and the
| mojave desert is about 124000 sq km. Yeah with gross
| mismanagement you might jeopardize the survival of some rare
| lizard or something, but it's a very far cry from a silicon
| wasteland.
| walrus01 wrote:
| > parking lots
|
| This is how much of downtown Tulsa, OK is covered in
| parking lots:
|
| https://i.redd.it/ukzcn1xx6cc91.jpg
|
| There is no _technological_ problem to covering a parking
| lot in PV, it 's a question of the political will and money
| to do it.
| fermentation wrote:
| In every game of Factorio I've played I didn't realize just how
| many solar panels I'd needed until I was hitting my power limits
| and in desperate need of more. The problem being that
| manufacturing these takes... power.
| jeffbee wrote:
| We have the power already! In California we currently enjoy the
| phenomenon of "curtailment" where we can't use solar power when
| and where it is produced, so we just disconnect solar panels
| from the grid. This usually happens in the spring when sun is
| plentiful and demand is low. If crystalline PV production was
| collocated with seasonally-curtailed solar power plants, you
| have a runaway virtuous cycle of zero-carbon energy production.
|
| Of course, you'd have to subsidize it because basic economics
| won't make it work.
| outworlder wrote:
| Yes but... In Factorio, the only cost is the original
| manufacturing costs. The same goes for storage. Once
| manufactured and placed, they will produce power forever as
| long as it is daylight. The capacitors will also last forever.
| There are no weather patterns to mess up production.
|
| In other words, once you make one, you have a permanent power
| increase. Your power can grow exponentially if you just focus
| on building and placing panels. That makes them the absolute
| best power source in the game. Not the most compact, though.
| But that doesn't matter since the map is infinite and there are
| no transmission losses.
|
| Reality is not as forgiving. We'll need more panels. Way more
| :) Even more if we start doing things like fuel synthesis. But
| we should.
|
| I has always bugged me that we use dirty power during summer
| to... power ACs! We have all this extra energy literally
| falling from the sky. Which is the whole reason why we want to
| get rid of it. Air conditioning doesn't actually require that
| much power to run with proper insulation. People have been able
| to power large RV air conditioning with solar alone.
| distrill wrote:
| tbh i just skip solar panels. it's such a grind. by the time i
| can make them at scale, i need so many of them, and i hate
| placing them. even with pretty OP construction bots it's not
| worth the effort IMO.
|
| this might be mitigated if you tile something that can self
| expand, but even then you'll have to AFK or just have this
| going on for hours while you don't have access to the power
| you're trying to generated.
|
| i end up scaling coal as far as i can and then rushing nuclear.
| nuclear is also a grind but at least you have to place them
| less frequently.
| sneedchucksneed wrote:
| elihu wrote:
| Another use of natural gas is to make fertilizer. Maybe you'd use
| a different process though if your end goal is to make ammonia?
| (I'm not an expert, but it seems you'd use electrolyzed hydrogen
| either way, but Haber Bosch reacts with nitrogen instead of CO2.)
| intrepidhero wrote:
| I get sabatier and electrolysis but what is a CO2 concentrator?
| Or rather how does it work? I thought that was the expensive and
| relatively unknown part of the process.
|
| Aside: Sweet company website https://terraformindustries.com/
| AdamTReineke wrote:
| Their white paper covers it, linked from their site.
|
| > CO2 concentration is performed using a closed lime/calcite
| calcination cycle, operating at ambient temperature and
| pressure.
|
| https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/02/03/terraform-indu...
| outworlder wrote:
| Can I borrow one for my Sodastream? :)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You may not like the 850degC operational temperature at
| home.
|
| But the cold part of the cycle, that actually concentrates
| the CO2 is fun to do at lab-scale, you just have to buy the
| CaO (and prepare for it becoming very hot).
| seltzered_ wrote:
| Website seems like the opposite of one of their competitors,
| https://www.prometheusfuels.com/
| mgerdts wrote:
| There's a lot of optimism in this article. Perhaps too much as it
| seems to gloss over some important details.
|
| > Our process works by using solar power to split water into
| hydrogen and oxygen, concentrating CO2 from the atmosphere, then
| combining CO2 and hydrogen to form natural gas.
|
| Then later it talks about how much desert there is, implying it's
| a great place for low-impact solar. How do the electricity and
| power come together and how much inefficiency is there in the
| wires or pipes? Presumably some of this water is likely to be sea
| water.
|
| Presumably the sea water that would be needed to feed the
| hydrocarbon production along with the sea water from desalination
| (also discussed later) will have their own problems.
| "desalination toxic brine" has 177,000 hits on google.
| greenthrow wrote:
| It makes a lot more sense to transport the energy to the water
| than vice versa.
|
| I don't agree with their plan to make synthetic hydrocarbons,
| but they are right about solar. In 50 years solar will be so
| ubiquitous and cheap that people will be horrified that we kept
| burning fossil fuels and building nuclear plants for so long.
| gibolt wrote:
| Solar is already extremely cheap, when costed out over it's
| minimal lifetime. At grid scale, it has dipped down to crazy
| levels.
|
| As you said, this trend will keep on going.
| leereeves wrote:
| According to a couple of studies discussed in [1], solar is
| cheap, but storage is still expensive.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_sou
| rce#...
| mgerdts wrote:
| Making hydrocarbons for airplanes and maybe for cargo ships
| makes sense unless the power density of batteries increases
| dramatically. Creating hydrocarbons to put into commuter cars
| and trucks that traverse developed regions sounds like a bad
| idea.
| mgerdts wrote:
| > It makes a lot more sense to transport the energy to the
| water than vice versa.
|
| That's my gut feeling as well. Perhaps the location of the
| consumer of the hydrocarbons would change that in some cases.
| johncearls wrote:
| But this way is carbon neutral. Every CO2 molecule you pump
| out, started out as a CO2 molecule you took from the air.
| There is no reason to dislike fossil fuels, if they no longer
| come from fossils. It's the releasing of carbon from millions
| of years ago that's creating the excess.
| Nzen wrote:
| While desalination requires disposing of all the waterborne
| particulate, the water can sometimes be precious enough that we
| bear it. I heard a radio report yesterday [0] about how
| investing in desalination helped mitigate USA CA Catalina
| Island's direly depleted resivoir. That's not to say that brine
| treatment or disposal isn't costly, more that - so long as
| people are committed to living in dry areas and can afford to,
| they will pressure their local governments to keep the area
| habitable.
|
| [0] https://www.marketplace.org/2022/07/18/drought-technology-
| po...
| rob_c wrote:
| And a lot of so far non existent recycling technologies and
| resources...
| seltzered_ wrote:
| This is an important point. There was a recent article
| inquiring the issues in recycling solar panels installed 20-25
| years ago:
| https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-07-14/california...
| .
| jeffbee wrote:
| That is pure fossil industry propaganda. There is no cadmium
| in ordinary terrestrial solar panels. The lead, if it's there
| at all, is in the solder and easily recovered by a pass
| through a 300-degree intake process. All of the solar panels
| installed in California, ever, would easily fit in the
| parking lot of Dodgers stadium, stacked to a reasonable
| height. They are non-toxic, insoluble bulk crystalline
| materials.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| "This story has been edited to clarify that panels
| containing toxic materials are routed for disposal to
| landfills with extra safeguards against leakage, and to
| note that panels that contain cadmium and selenium are
| primarily used in utility-grade applications."
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| 90% of a solar panel is recyclable. However, it's only
| necessary to do so once the panel is no longer economically
| viable, and panels are generally warrantied to produce 80%+ of
| their nameplate capacity after 20+ years.
|
| In the EU and elsewhere there's a healthy market in used
| panels; when a large scale installation upgrades to
| newer/better panels, the used panels go on the market and end
| up in places where people don't care about the efficiency per
| area.
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