L4sBotSolar power and storage prices have dropped almost 90%
tun85-87% reduced in last 10 years
I hate to be pedantic, but the things in the picture are windmills… you know giant whirly things that are powered by wind… kind of very different from things that lie around and absorb sunlight.
Wait until you hear what creates wind!
IchNichtenLichten
ummthatguyThere’s a man in the clouds who blows really hard.
But the plants he eats grow in sunlight.
But, but… what if we put solar panels on the windmills? ;-)
Actually I double checked and solar-assisted windmills are a thing though not likely what’s shown in the picture. Actually now I’m wondering if you could also use solar to concentrate a local heat differential and power a wind turbine (though liquid is probably more efficient)
That is inefficient, we should put windmills on solar panels.
dezmdSolar Panel Windmills. Checkmate, nukular nerds.
You want pedantic? Those are wind turbines, champ. Windmills are used to mill grain, no matter how many people like yourself try to bastardize the term to apply to anything that rotates with air.
What’s next for you people, pinwheels are now windmills?
What if the turbines are hooked up to an electric milling machine ?
Then it’s a windmilf
Sorry, but not all wind mills are used for grain. Some ground stone and other material!
Or for pumping water!
OderusFound the Dutch guy
Thank you! Seeing this more and more often and it drives me insane.
I told you I hate to be pedantic.
Fair enough.
Yes it’s a stupid picture, the solar panels are in the background, not nearly as noticeable as the wind turbines.
It’s not pedantic, just wrong.
Wind power also involves batteries. This article is about solar and batteries.
Tell me again about how we need to build more nuclear.
We definitely need to build more nuclear.
Agreed. 1000x. Solar alone can’t save us.
Nice straw man. Nobody is arguing 100% solar.
Hence why we need nuclear as well… nice fail.
I agree that you failed with your straw man. Got anything else?
I’ll let your downvotes and my upvotes speak for themselves. You fail. Again.
Thanks, now we’ve established you have no argument apart from a straw man and the realization that most people are wrong about the need for new nuclear. You can run along now.
And we need to do reactors with liquid fuels instead of solid fuel
You realize uranium isn’t a liquid, right?
No but you can dilute it into a fluid
…wikipedia.org/…/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor
ikiddSolar and nuclear address completely different goals.
I know. Nuclear provides base load power, which can be argued is not needed any more.
It can be argued but only poorly.
Feel free to offer corrections.
The argument is one of efficiency and load distribution. Base load power plants are capable of greater efficiency than variable ones. This is down to optimisations made around specific output levels and the infrastructure required to support said loads. For example if you know the characteristics of your power output and that of the grid you can build a transformer or switch mode power supply to bridge that specific gap. This outperforms variable input transformers in every case.
There is an argument that low efficiency doesn’t matter if the source is renewable, but this fails to take into consideration the embodied energy cost of producing renewable generators, not to mention the increased cost. An inefficient system may not produce enough energy over the course of its lifetime compared to the energy it cost to make.
Finally, most sources of renewables are intermittent and are not necessarily related to the population’s power consumption. This makes the storing of energy necessary in order to regulate supply. Storage of energy is a large source of inefficiency and one of the key areas that is being focused on. Base load plant is absolutely necessary to minimise this inefficiency as much as possible.
For a good overview I recommend this site from Penn State Uni: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/eme807/node/667
These sound more like arguments in support of a distributed power grid rather than arguments for nuclear.
You keep referring to inefficiency but in real terms nuclear is so expensive that inefficiencies in renewables is a drop in the bucket in comparison.
What do you mean by a distributed power grid? Do you mean power generation happening locally? This is already a thing and is growing in the form of Combined Heat and Power. This doesn’t get rid of the need for base load, the overall grid will still need balancing and will still have a base load unless you plan to disconnect local grids from each other in which case welcome to Texas…
Money is not the point here (even though nuclear really doesn’t cost much per kWh). I’m talking about the need to build a system that will produce more power over it’s lifetime than it costs to make. This is still something that is surprisingly close in many cases so any extra bit of inefficiency risks making the overall system pointless.
Maybe I missed some points by skimming, but the arguments made in that article are that:
- Australian researcher agrees with his stance
-
a region had 22% of its power produced by wind at one point
I guess the claim “it can be argued” is technically proven true, but the majority opinion I keep hearing from the electrical grid engineers in the news is the opposite
And, well, sometimes it just simply is night, and sometimes the wind doesn’t blow. We don’t have the battery tech to run from storage alone
But, honestly why wouldn’t we use nuclear? It’s the one power source we have without any real downsides untill ITER finally brings positive results
And, well, sometimes it just simply is night, and sometimes the wind doesn’t blow.
Do you really think this isn’t already taken into account?
We don’t have the battery tech to run from storage alone
Nobody is making that argument, as far as I’m aware. There are plenty of ways of storing energy, e.g. pumped hydro, that would work in conjunction with battery storage.
But, honestly why wouldn’t we use nuclear?
The obvious one. It’s wildly expensive when compared to renewables, and that’s before the usual nuclear build issues of cost and schedule overruns.
We need nuclear because it can cover 20% for 50 years, then we are out of suitable Uranium (allegedly).
That includes an expected undiscovered amount of twice of what has already been discovered.
Clearly nuclear can’t solve the climate change problem alone.
I was still quoted 40K CAD. 20 year ROI. Not feasible for me.
Is that paying cash for the solar system or financing? Financing can devastate the ROI with interest rates today. I’m looking at as long as 12 year ROI with possibly as short as 7 year ROI if I consider the USA’s federal tax incentives. My slightly southern latitude (a border state with Canada) also likely contributes to slightly higher generation results using the same equipment.
How are the government incentives in Canada?
Bruh I got quoted 50k in St. Louis last year, would take decades for roi
$50k is a pretty large installation, 18kw-22kw I’d guess for solar only (no battery storage). I’m hoping thats only a max of 100% replacement of electricity sourcing (meaning essentially no net grid consumption after you’re installed). What’s the price per KWh for electricity delivered to your door in St Louis? Its gotta be pretty crazy cheap if you’re that large a consumer of electricity and you’re paying in cash with no battery, and still looking at multiple decades of ROI with the US federal tax credit.
I don’t remember the kWh specs and price off hand but a decent portion of the cost was that I’m in a 1.5 story that faces S and have a lot of small roofs rather than one large roof so it’d be a bunch of panels that didn’t have full sun most of the day. Which is true of all hundred houses in my subdivision as well. Basically build of the house made this difficult or impossible
Does that mean a substantial portion of the $50k quoted was setting up lots of panels is many small spaces, (because of the broken up nature of the roof) and that perhaps the system was oversized its electrical capacity because of the assumption that it would only be fractionally efficient because of the substandard angles and shading? I could see that. Certainly roof designs and even large mature trees can make solar unfeasible in those situations…
Maybe, I was so mad I didn’t even get more quotes, I should really do so but I was expecting 10-20 at most and hearing 50 kinda put me off the prospect for a while. Decided to spend effort on other home improvement we could see instead
In Canada you can get a 40k loan from the federal govt that is 0% interest on a 10 year term for doing green upgrades to your home. My solar generates more in credits than than the cost of the loan over the year.
The Greener Homes Program is a bit of a pain to jump through all the hoops but getting thousands off in grants and a 0% loan is worth it.
for doing green upgrades to your home.
Who is owning a home in Canada lol. You’ll pay your landlord $3000 for 1000sqft or fuck off.
Not all of us live in big cities where we would need to cry over high rent and house prices.
Even in the middle of nowhere a house is a million dollars.
They aren’t.
I just moved last year.
But keep hyperbolizing, it only undermines the point you seem to want to hammer on.
I just moved last year.
But keep hyperbolizing, it only undermines the point you seem to want to hammer on.
… I also have eyes, and family in real estate. A tiny house an hour from any town is 1 million. A crack shack that needs to be demolished and rebuilt is 750K.
Nope in BC in a little city. The cost of houses here is rarely 1 Million.
You seem to just want to be mad about things even if you need to exaggerate to be able to stomp your feet like a toddler over it.
Since you have some anger over this so I’m gonna bid you a good day since talking to you is pointless when facts don’t matter.
So because 1 city has affordable houses you talk for all of Canada? lmao.
If you are willing to DIY you can cut that number dramatically. Out of curiosity what was the size of the array in that quote and did it include battery storage if so how much chances are that you can cut it by anywhere from 50% to 75% if you’re willing to Simply purchase directly and install yourself. The amount that installers charge is absolutely asinine usually 50% or more of that quote is just the installation which is in the same because it’s not difficult at all. People like to act scared like oh that’ll be difficult or hard or dangerous, it’s extremely simple you’re dealing with DC which is very straightforward everything is very clearly labeled on that equipment and it’s quite simple to do yourself
Is there a go-to source for diy product and instructions? I’m interested in doing this in the near future.
I can’t think of any One-Stop shop for literally everything, but there is a lot of great material out there both on forums and on YouTube. If you take it one step at a time and look at each individual piece of the installation you’ll be able to find fantastic instructions for all of them fairly easily.
If you are in the US I recommend purchasing from signature solar, they have a lot of great bundles that will both save you some money and get you everything you need. I’d also say they have the best battery storage options, their rack mount batteries and their new wall mount battery are both fantastic and very easy to work with. They also sell solar panels by the pallet which helps you get a nice large array at a good price.
If I had to pick the hardest part it would just be making sure you get the grounding right on the inverter, if you’re not careful it’s pretty easy to end up with a ground Loop which isn’t particularly dangerous but it will cause lots of weird little issues like flickering lights and other annoyances. But it’s fairly easy to correct it it’s usually just a result of people connecting both the input and the output on the inverter as well as bonding the secondary panel to the primary panel which creates a ground loop. The solution is as simple as just don’t connect to the input power ground to the inverter only connect to the output ground so that it has to go through the ground Bond on the panels
It will definitely sound like a lot, but again if you just take each individual piece by itself it’s very straightforward very simple and you’ll be able to get it done while saving an absolute asinine amount of money compared to an installer.
I will warn you that if you try to do gridtie, which is where you’re able to send excess electricity back into the grid. That comes with a lot more red tape and can get a lot more complicated. I personally did an off-grid setup, which still uses the grid as a possible input so if my batteries are dead and there’s no sun out I can still use the power like normal it’s just not capable of sending Excess power back out into the grid so there’s a whole bunch of red tape that I don’t have to worry about.