Jack of all trades"The up-front energy investment in renewable energy infrastructures has not been visible as a hurdle thus far, as we have had surplus energy to invest (and smartly, at that; if only we had started in earnest earlier!). Against a backdrop of energy decline—which I feel will be the only motivator strong enough to make us serious about a replacement path—we may find ourselves paralyzed by the Trap."
Nebulous Menace (Sandy B.)@jackofalltrades Good news! Even in 2011, it took less than 18 months for a solar panel to generate enough energy to make and install another solar panel and all the associated hardware. (I don't know the energy cost these days, but the financial panel cost has dropped by a factor of 4 and money cost is a very rough approximation of energy cost.)
@nebulousmenace Money cost is a very poor approximation of the material / energy cost, as it doesn't take into account environmental damage or the time it takes for nature to replenish used resources.
Our industrial civilization depends on continuous destruction of nature and exploitation of limited resources.
That's why it's very hard to come up with the real cost of renewables. Their production depends on a global industrial machinery that for the most part still runs on fossil fuels.
@jackofalltrades Most of the financial cost [in 2011] was paying for energy, and there are clear physical improvements in solar panels since then. [I went WAY over 1000 chars. Details available on request.] And the 2011 energy payback time was less than a year; you could double solar every year based on energy cost THEN.
Most of the raw material is still sand.
There are a lot of things that could be problems for our society- phosphorus for fertilizer, cropland salination, microplastics, whatever- but I'm not expert on those. In 2011 solar, specifically, was at 70 GW worldwide (per wikipedia), and in 2022 we broke the 1000-GW mark. The world looks different when solar is 4% of electricity, today [3], than it did when solar was 0.3% of electricity, 2011.I'm going to check what Prof. Murphy's beliefs look like today.
RD@nebulousmenace @jackofalltrades
>Most of the raw material is still sand.<
"Manufacturing solar panels’ silicon requires a handful of energy-intensive, toxic waste-emitting processes.2 First, pure quartz gravel, pure carbon (i.e., Tar Sands’ petroleum coke) and wood are transported to a smelter kept at 3000° Fahrenheit (1649° Celsius) for years at a time. Since smelters can explode if delivery of electricity to them is interrupted, neither solar nor wind (which provide only intermittent power) can fuel a smelter.3 Typically, smelters and refineries are powered by natural gas, coal and/or nuclear power. To produce 20,000 tons of polysilicon, one smelter (of several refineries) consumes enough power as 300,000 homes.4"
https://katiesinger.substack.com/p/do-i-report-what-ive-learned-about
references:
2. Troszak, Thomas, "Why Do We Burn Coal and Trees for Solar Panels?" (2019) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335083312_Why_do_we_burn_coal_and_trees_to_make_solar_panels
3. Troszak, Thomas, “The hidden costs of solar photovoltaic power,” NATO Energy Security Centre of Excellence, No. 16., Nov. 2021. https://www.enseccoe.org/data/public/uploads/2021/11/d1_energy-highlights-no.16.pdf
4. Bruns, Adam, “Wacker Completes Dynamic Trio of Billion-Dollar Projects in Tennessee: ‘Project Bond’ cements the state’s clean energy leadership,” 2009
Do I report what I’ve learned about solar PVs— or live with it, privately?
Years ago, I told an engineer that I want to cause minimal ecological harm. This man knew that I had my own car, refrigerator, washing machine, phone, Internet access and electricity available 24/7. He took a deep breath and explained to me that every manufactured item requires multiple processes from the extractive, energy-guzzling, water-guzzling, toxic waste-emitting global super-factory. He connected my material goods with ecological degradation—the degradation I want reduced.
Hitsu Yonai@RD4Anarchy @nebulousmenace @jackofalltrades
No offence, but their seems to be a confusion of units here:
"To produce 20,000 tons of polysilicon, one smelter (of several refineries) consumes enough power as 300,000 homes.4"
No offence, but their seems to be a confusion of units here:
"To produce 20,000 tons of polysilicon, one smelter (of several refineries) consumes enough power as 300,000 homes.4"
@hitsuyonai @RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades Yup. Energy-to-power, the oldest fuckup in the book and one I've made myself. They probably mean 20,000 tons a year, but I didn't use that number at all in my calculations. I don't think I did, anyway.
Not really, its just saying it takes x amount of power to smelt 20k tons of polysilicon, and that same amount of power would be enough to power 300k homes.
edit to add: Nebulous Menace is right to point out that it is probably per year (but applied to the houses, not the smelter IMO), but that's an omission of an important (but maybe assumed) detail, not a confusion of units.
@RD4Anarchy @hitsuyonai @jackofalltrades Power is energy per time.
Power is "how fast can you climb a flight of stairs", energy is "how many flights of stairs did you climb". Your electric bill is in kilowatt-hours, a unit of energy: one kWh is one kilowatt running for one hour (for instance, a large space heater.)
"300k homes", a unit I hate, is probably around 200 megawatts. But is it 200 megawatts for a second? An hour? A year?
@nebulousmenace @hitsuyonai @jackofalltrades
Unfortunately I couldn't find the actual source of that reference so I couldn't check it for any clarifying info.
Would it have been more accurate if it said "to produce 20k tons of polysilicon the smelter uses enough energy to power 300k homes for a year"? That's how I understood it, but it's a fair point that it was not worded as well as it should have been and my assumption could be wrong.
@RD4Anarchy @nebulousmenace @hitsuyonai Here's the source: https://siteselection.com/theEnergyReport/2009/apr/Wacker-Chemie/index.htm
"""
Bradley says reliability can be just as important as price to such a high-tech, 24/7 operation.
"Reliability is key, and I would say reliability in this case is more important than price, because the financial implications are much higher. Think about the loads — 100 to 130 megawatts in phase one. A nuclear plant is 1200 megawatts. Fully built out, they could be a third of a nuclear plant.
"""
@RD4Anarchy @hitsuyonai @jackofalltrades The units are correct, yes, but we are all making our best guess here. The analogy I should have come up with LAST post, and didn't, was "He lives 60 MPH away from me." 60 MPH for an hour? Nobody knows.