it can’t be used to create false scarcity! is isn’t massively volatile, how are the ultra wealthy going to make absurd amount of money off it?
Not a fair comparison.
In a nutshell, you can’t directly replace gas power with electric power. Gotta have some sort of conversion. Gas is very portable and offers big bang. Solar generally needs to be generated on demand or stored. Then it needs to be transported. We can’t transport the solar power from Texas to Michigan the same way we can truck gas across state lines. The longer an electric line, the more power is lost.
Another issue with this graphic is that it implies that solar panels are a one-time expense. This isn’t true. They generally last about 20 years.
I’m a champion of green energy, but a stickler for details.
Solar panels are easily recyclable as are a lot of batteries once infrastructure catches up. You burn that gas and its gone.
Millions of acres are used for corn to produce ethanol mixes for gas. All of this land is under direct sun. Also wind. This again is because of corn subsidies in the US.
The amount of money tied up in oil companies is second only to the military industrial complex. If we took that money to put toward renewable, we would solve a shit ton of issues.
Yes voltage drop exists. However , you know we have electrical lines to basically every structure in the US right? Even Joe blow in the absolute middle of nowhere has power lines. The grid is already here. We need to invest in it and improve it (also destroy data centers but thats a different discussion)
Also, panels dont just abruptly die after 20 years. They slowly start losing efficiency. You could be using a 30 year old panel, and it could be at 70% efficiency depending on degradation (*I can’t say if 70% is accurate , I’d have to research it). Again, gas is burned up and used instantly, one time. Panel gets old, recycle it.
But we don’t do things because they’re good. We do them because they’re profitable. Capitalism breeds innovation right?
Solar panels are easily recyclable
What’s the source on this? To my knowledge they’re like most e-waste: technically recyclable but separating the component elements is functionally impossible
Most of the mass is aluminum for the frame. Then you have the actual silicon, which are paper thin wafers. And a voltage controller.
Also, its moot anyway, because that gas and oil is burned up the second its used. If we even recycle the frame of the panels only, net win.
separating the component elements is functionally impossible
No, it’s actually easy to pull apart the different components of a panel and can be done by hand. The main expense is the labour.
The labor cost is the problem - it costs $10 to $20 (AU) to recycle a panel, but the value of the parts vary based on the cost of copper, silver and aluminium and so capitalism struggles to make a consistent profit on it. Hopefully as the oil crisis worsens, transport costs will probably go up and the profitablity of recycling should increase.
Then as a stickler you should probably clarify that 20yrs isn’t the lifespan of a panel but the simply the end of most warranty periods.
The panel itself is (typically) fine, just less efficient after so long.
We can’t transport the solar power from Texas to Michigan the same way we can truck gas across state lines.
Batteries?
Also this is goofy. Panels aren’t centralized. You could have tons of panels and wind in Michigan. You wouldn’t transmit Texas power that far unless you really had to, and there’s still ways to do it if you needed
I had Google help me out with this one. For illustrative purposes, let’s take the Tesla Semi (an electric commercial truck) battery. You could transport about 4 MWh worth of electricity. That’s about 4 months worth of electricity for an average American household. Here’s the details:
A single Tesla Semi utilizes an estimated 850 kWh to 1,000 kWh battery pack, which weighs approximately 10,000 to 12,000 lbs. If a trailer were filled strictly with these large, fully integrated packs rather than smaller, individual battery cells, only about 4 to 6 of these high-capacity, 1-megawatt-hour systems could physically fit within the weight limits of a standard trailer.
Battery Capacity & Weight: The Semi uses roughly 1 MWh, which consists of four, high-capacity, smaller packs.
Total Weight: A full 1 MWh pack weighs between 10,000 lbs (4,570 kg) and 12,000 lbs.
Capacity Limit: Due to weight restrictions of 80,000 lbs for a loaded semi (with a 2,000 lb increase for EVs), you cannot simply load 80,000 lbs of batteries into a trailer.
Physical Space: While the trailer has massive volume, the 10,000+ lb per pack weight means the trailer would reach its weight limit long before it is full of, say, Model S packs (if that was the method).
Now compare that to high voltage power lines if you’re interested. “HVDC transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000 km (620 mi)” (Wikipedia)
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So, driving batteries around the country? Really?
I mean no, because it probably wouldn’t ever need to be done.
But I’m not sure why it would be any worse than trucks full of oil.
It wouldn’t be done because the energy density of a battery is atrocious compared to oil, something like 100x worse. Half of the input spent in burning oil comes for free in the air around us, so batteries will never likely beat it.
it probably wouldn’t ever need to be done.
As the parent commenter said, the energy itself wouldn’t need to be delivered. You just deliver the panels once.
Why be just as bad as the old system? And while I’m not sure, I would expect it would be hugely more inefficient in terms of energy produced compared to energy delivered to the end user.
Bud, we drive gas around the country. Thats even stupider.
Lot of propaganda from oil companies is working, I see.
Yeah, I know. That’s why driving electrons around the country isn’t any better.
You don’t need to drive electrons around constantly - just drive the panels there once and you have power there for 20 years.
Michigan is cloudy or overcast most of the winter. It’s a lake-effect thing, it starts once you get over the border from Indiana. Why use panels 4 or 5 months out of the year?
The beauty of solar though is its pretty deployable to where the demand is, especially rooftop solar with residential batteries.
Then use the next $100M for developing energy storage infrastructure… Or split the upfront cost evenly between generation/storage. Gotta think longer term than a single years’s balance sheet. Anything you build now saves you money in the future instead of shoveling it into a literal incinerator.
Woah there you socialist, we only care about next quarter profits here !
/s
One of the more interesting things I’ve learned is that the reason why electricity is so cheap at night is because it’s hard to properly throttle fossil fuel plants.
Depends on the type. Coal takes hours to ramp up to temperature but combined-cycle gas turbines ramp up and down in minutes.
The basic statement is that $100m is spent once and is gone or it is spent on a recurring resource. Seems to clear, all the arguments about the evils of solar panels are ignoring that the bill is$100m or $20,000m over 20 years. For a $20b saving, people should be able to afford a few changes. I have.
Thank you for the sanity. Transmission and distribution loss is a problem, as well as sending power doesn’t even work like that. You can’t tell power where to go in a grid, you just put power in to the system. Trying to shuffle power from the Texas grid across a couple subregions to MI would be bonkers. It would be easier to operate 200 SMRs in MI.
If you’re interested, modern HVDC transmission is really efficient on long distances. “HVDC transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000 km (620 mi)” (Wikipedia)
Wrong details though. You sound like you WANT to be dependent on fossil fuels. And calling yourself a “champion of green energy” reveals quite a lot. 🤷
angry German energy minister noises
Ok ok this might work but one question, can we mine solar panels out if the ground in the middle east?
difficult to justify invading other countries though for their solar, that’s why we need to stay on oil, to prop up defence industries and provide education pathways for the poor /s
i guess you could argue too much sun falls on Iran ?
This is a climate group though and yet the economic arguments in some of these comments are bordering on insane :(
Most of the solar is produced in China, since thats who refines all the materials. So we could invade them.
difficult to justify invading other countries though for their solar
Recurring profits.
Not that difficult.
I’ll take solar and geo-thermal.
When our energy department ran this calc Solar was far cheaper but the actual costs were nearly 10x using LPG because a grid needed storage and diversification to account for the different outputs. If the sun is low you cant run a country of batteries and still have it match LPG.
This image shows Solar at a best case comparison and not the times when its producing 20% of LPG
Maybe there’s a battery somewhere in there?
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And with battery prices falling, the intermittency issues that made LNG useful despite the drawbacks is gradually becoming much less of a problem too.
Plus it’s pretty easy to simply shift the time of use to when there’s the most clean capacity online (and this is easily encouraged with variable electricity rates)
And this is 2024 numbers. Gas is more expensive now that the strait of Hormuz is closed for a good long time
This is dead wrong (edit: kind of; see below). The dollars per million BTU for natural gas this February was $3.62, or 32% of the figure cited in the infographic. You’re thinking of oil.
Solar is clearly more sustainable, economical, independent, and most importantly livable than LNG, but I still need to call out flawed assumptions on my side where I see them.
Edit: I actually have no idea how this infographic reached its $11 assumption. Wholesale prices for natural gas were $4.88 per MMBtu in 2024. Emphasis on “wholesale”, but since this infographic doesn’t deign to cite any sources other than “Ember” (this Ember?), I have no idea what figure it means.
Edit 2: After doing way too much digging into how global LNG prices are measured because this infographic barely even leaves breadcrumbs, they might’ve been using a metric like the JKMc1 (“LNG Japan/Korea Marker PLATTS Future”) (edit 3: or the TFAc1). The prices of natural gas (transported via pipeline) and LNG (transported via ship) are going to be quite different, and there’s no consistent “global average price” for LNG. The best you can really do is use some sort of proxy, for which it appears the JKMc1 is a reasonable one for reasons I don’t fully understand yet. That was approximately $11 in 2024 (it was actually seemingly higher, but close enough; probably close but separate figures) and was $10.73 this February. It was $15.92 March 1, showing at least in East Asia that LNG is about 50% more expensive than last month. I don’t know how well that applies to Lemmy’s predominantly American and European userbase, however (well, I know the US now supplies about 60% of Europe’s LNG and that American natural gas is currently cheaper).
God, it’s so frustrating that this infographic barely cites anything. Anyway, to the person I responded to: you were at least somewhat right; the closing of the Strait seems to have clearly impacted East Asia… somehow. Iran and Qatar are the 3rd and 6th largest natural gas producers, respectively (no clue about LNG shipments), but I feel like I’ll end up with a doctoral thesis on the geopolitics of LNG prices by 2030 from knowing basically nothing if I don’t stop here. What all this does tell me is that an estimate of “global average price for LNG” means very little when prices per MMBtu (liquified or otherwise) seem to vary so heavily by region.
this right here is the only reason I’m still skeptical of pretty much everything
promoters of green and nuclear energy can’t get their damn act together and create proper articles that aren’t half-assed crap with no sources. They just claim shit from thin air.
Bitch, I WANT to believe you! Give me something to bloody believe that we really have no reason to use fossil fuels anymore.
I still
kindabelieve it. But CONVINCE ME ALREADY…It’s funny you assume they have to convince you.
We know already about climate change, we know already about geopolitics and sovereignty issues, we know fossil fuels are a finite resource, which means they’ll inevitably get more expensive over time as we run through the most accessible deposit and go to ones that are harder and harder to harvest.
But you think they should convince you to use renewable, and not the other way around: why would you want to stick to fossil fuels? Name your argument and back it with solid sources, please!
I don’t have one and I’m in favor of every renewable + nuclear
I think using fossil fuels increases dependence on other countries like the
southmiddle east, which both causes instability in those regions, and makes us vulnerable to them.Though you are right about how fossil fuels will become more expensive eventually, we’ve been finding more coal and oil deposits than we have been depleting… At least according to like an hour of research I did a while ago. It’s close, but I don’t think we will be running out soon.
Though the ozone layer is healing specifically because we cut back on that shit.
My point was - why fucking make shit up and lie in favor of renewables and nuclear? Why not quote proper sources? There’s plenty of positives to renewables but man, some of these writers are incompetent.
In Yankee places “gas” means “gasoline” so I’d blame the infographic for saying “gas imports” instead of “natural gas imports” if it’s supposed to target the country that uses the most natural gas
I don’t blame it whatsoever for calling it “gas”; it should be clear to anyone remotely familiar enough with energy infrastructure to understand anything past “solar better”, i.e. they should at least pick up on one of the following (in no particular order):
- Gasoline and solar power would only be comparable for cars, and the comparison would be nonsense because electric cars pull from the grid, not pure solar.
- The icon on the left is distinctly an LNG tanker. Even if you’ve never seen one, anyone who’s seen a crude oil tanker would know it looks nothing like that.
- The graphic explicitly says “LNG” twice.
- Measuring gasoline in MMBtu would be deranged for this comparison; the sale price is expressed in the volume of crude oil/gasoline, so you’d just convert it straight to Watts. Even if you didn’t know what a Btu is, you’d at least think “what the fuck is an MMBtu?”
- Cars are never mentioned once.
- One of the statistics is “Efficiency of a gas plant”, which is the nail in the coffin for anyone who understands literally anything about energy.
At some point it’s incumbent on the reader to have a bare minimum understanding of how the world around them works; I learned some of this in circa sixth grade. Some of this on its own isn’t common knowledge; all of this taken together should stop any reasonable reader from defaulting to “gasoline”.
If you’re just gleaning it in a hurry, you miss the relatively fine print from “LNG” to “55%”. Selecting font sizes to emphasize the most important information, and being understandable by an uninformed audience base (think social media), is absolutely fundamental to infographics.
the comparison would be nonsense because electric cars pull from the grid, not pure solar.
Not necessarily. Quite a lot of solar installation companies like Tesla’s popular roof-like tiles push self-sufficiency for some reason. My guess is to sell batteries. Anyways, even without that, your petrol bill’s still a useful visualization for how much more economic solar is
anyone who’s seen a crude oil tanker
MMBtu
gas plant
Buddy, I obviously agree for MMBtu, which is why I cited it among other unordered points and explicitly called out that people are liable not to know it. If you do know it, though, it immediately gives it away, which is why I included it to cover bases.
But a crude oil tanker is a common thing plenty of people have seen, and putting “power plant” in there is straight-up a self-own: you are profoundly ignorant about energy infrastructure if you think we’re taking gasoline into power plants to convert into electricity. That doesn’t make someone bad or stupid; it just means they have zero standing to complain about how an energy infographic misled them by calling methane “gas”. They lack the bare minimum foundation to even understand what it’s trying to say.
It should also be obvious that when I said “not pure solar”, I meant “generally”, because at that point the reader would need to be willfully obtuse to construe the graphic to be about electric cars. I almost hedged with “generally”, but I (wrongly, naïvely) assumed it wouldn’t be subjected to superfluous pedantry.
Edit: I actually forgot another obvious point because there are just so many things that would tell reasonable people this isn’t about gasoline: why would a tanker be used as an icon to represent gasoline anyway? A jerrycan, an oil barrel, or a gas pump would clearly be much better, because oil tankers don’t represent the final product anyway, aren’t a common icon for gasoline (if basically at all), and don’t have a distinctive side profile. There are a million reasons it’s not the graphic’s fault if you look at it and assume it’s about gasoline.
Not everyone lives in oceanside windows. Out of those who have looked at one they don’t necessarily know that’s an oil tanker; if it’s through a beach, it’s too distant (and likely heatwaved) to perceive something different with the deck at first sight, and at closer ranges I used to think they were just empty cargo ships “and of course the decks are so high up because the ship is floating higher up because it’s lighter”. Working with content who’ve never been on a ship they think there’s nothing beneath the deck except what makes it float.
There’s also the assumption that one wouldn’t think “it’s probably a different kind of oil tanker I haven’t seen since it ‘obviously’ says gasoline”. “What the fuck is an MMBtu?” Something related to gasoline, of course. Hindsight is not first sight.
Most US people are profoundly ignorant about energy infrastructure other than coal plants exist and the US relies on fossil fuels and you put petrol in your car. Just because you remember a great education doesn’t mean others remember their bad education. Ask someone outside of the energy and environmental subject what they learned in Earth Science (sorry if I got the subject name wrong) other than the different types of rocks, tectonics, and what the weather really is.
it just means they have zero standing to complain
An infographic’s purpose is to communicate to the uninitiated, not preach to the choir. This is just a single word that artificially limits its target audience and frankly I don’t see why we’re arguing so pointedly about it.
the reader would need to be willfully obtuse to construe the graphic to be about electric cars
I didn’t think it was about cars either, but I still think it’s plausible enough that one in a hundred could mistake it, and that is my point.
P.S.: Kudos for the diaeresis.
Europe is currently over $15/mmbtu. Your prices are not for LNG which is what Europe or Asia is faced with importing.
It’s probably just AI generated bs.
Generally, solar takes 10+ years to break even in a residential situation, I can’t see how things would be 10x cheaper at the TWh scale.
I don’t agree with the “AI-generated” claim. Gavin Mooney appears to be a real person working with Kaluza, an Australian company which presents itself as:
The Energy Intelligence Platform
An electrified future will be built on data intelligence.
We turn energy complexity into growth opportunity so energy companies can make a cleaner, smarter system work for everyone.
(So a financial conflict of interest, but one I happen to agree with.) I just attribute it to a “shitty, token attempt at sourcing because nobody really checks these things” mindset.
When energy prices went crazy in the UK a while back I heard of some people getting under a year payback times. My energy usage is much lower than theirs so it would take me quite a bit longer though. A lot of the costs are fairly static.
At this point a battery alone might be a better investment. Cheaper install and using off peak rates to charge could drop my per unit costs from 24 to 8. But I think even that would take years to pay for myself. It’s also annoying because the grid should already be fucking doing this! Why should I have to do it myself in a setup that is going to be far less efficient in costs than doing it at grid scales with bulk buying of batteries?
The tech exists today, I can buy it.
Economies of scale
Maybe.
I can’t find any gavinmooney profiles on any socials… even x dot com.
For DYI plug-in small scale solar and meter running backwards (balkonkraftwerk scenario) for 0.3 eur/kWh break even is less than 2 years.
DYI larger/meter not running backwards but with battery buffering it’s longer. Anything else requires a licensed electrician, and that does set you back.
The infographic is using 10c/watt as solar panel only. Your 10 year payback is based on tariffs, permits, sales comissions, and a monopoly utility designed to make solar prohibitive. In Australia, payback is about 2 years. But, yes, at utility scale the lack of BS costs make a giant difference. Under $1/watt installed instead of $3+/watt.
good time to plug the technology connections video
How do I vote him in as president?
We need a fricken youtuber to say what the bought and paid for media is too afraid and cowardly to say. Why can we not have someone like this as a politician! Well, because he’s actually smart, he wouldn’t take that job.
When is it ever a bad time?
good time to plug the technology connections video
good time to plug the technology connections video
good time to plug the technology connections video
I missed it when it made the rounds a few weeks back. Thanks for sharing again!
What do the lobbyists get out of the solar panels? How do the solar panels generate constant fees?
How do the solar panels generate constant fees?
You see, people need to pay for electricity. Generally speaking, they don’t get it for free. Thus the owner of the solar panels makes money.
The issue with solar is, that the owner can be a simple home owner putting the panels on their roof. When you add batteries to that, it is entirly possible that they never need to buy electricity from the grid ever again. However we are still talking about some middle class person here, who is not going to be able to afford a lobbyist.
There are other ways well below lobbyist level as well, such a solar and wind cooperatives or some farmer setting up a few installations on his property. They do have more money, but still probably are well below lobbyist levels of money.
Considering that US congressmen can evidently be bought with like ten to twenty thousand bucks, or tickets to some resort, I don’t understand how USians still don’t have crowdfunded lobbying.
Because it would make it way too obvious that their representative are not really representing voters but only the biggest wallet around. Second is a crowdfunded lobbying would be a one shot thing, while corporate lobbying can provide a more stable “support”.
Right, so before we see solar take hold, it needs to be illegal for a property owner to own the panels, and the power company has the right to put them anywhere they like.
In sweden its set up so that the owners of household solar cannot ever make money, only save on cost
what the fuck?
Gotta pay for grid maintenance somehow
Same in most countries. In the U.S. many states penalize people for putting in solar through forced monthly payments to the power companies even if they use zero KWh.
This is what happens in the area I was looking to move to… at that point I’d just have myself removed from the grid entirely. Fuck that nonsense.
Right. There’s not as much money in renewables, so there’s less lobbying.
I mean… Isn’t there though? You do a one time investment, and then you earn money for 20 years with negligible operating costs.
Shouldn’t every capitalist get a priapism from this idea?
Capitalism is about hierarchy more than it is about profit. Capitalists spent billions to put someone who bankrupted a casino in charge of largest economy in the world to stop the woke left. Capitalists pay for golden parachutes for nepo baby CEOs who shit the company bed. Capitalists sack departments with mission-critical institutional knowledge because that institutional knowledge gives the workers power.
In an ideal free market, the company that ends up with the largest market share is not the company that optimized for profit, but the company that optimized for murdering all the other companies so it’s the largest by default. In real life, the rich and powerful let this mechanism roam free when it helps them oppress the working class, while regulating the market when it makes the game unfun for the rich, and while insulating each other from the consequences that were not guarded against by regulation.
I think the main problem is a lot of them are already entrenched in the fossil fuel market and most of the people holding the money aren’t the entrepreneurial types because all the wealth is inherited so they’d rather just hold onto their existing property and fight to keep it relevant than start again somewhere else. It’s dumb though because yeah it’s free money printing. Am I assessing this right?
There are other expenses and location also plays a big role, but it is certainly true that solar is much cheaper when all is said and done. Hence why the energy transition continues in the US even without subsidies.
my solar panels don’t produce shit because my city never sees the sun.
This is a straight up lie.
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No, they are telling the truth. Solar panels do not need to poop.
Fuck. Ive been had.
Do you live in Menzoberranzan?
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The Short Answer
Low clouds can block light from the sun, which means less solar energy. However, certain cloudy conditions can actually increase the amount of light reaching solar panels. Weather satellites such as those in the GOES-R Series keep an eye on these clouds, which can help scientists make predictions about the capture of solar energy.
https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/k-12-education/atmosphere/how-do-clouds-affect-solar-energy
A) only one of those technologies is burning the planet… kinda big part of the equation
B) here are the numbers for australia:
source: https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/Electricity-transition/GenCost
C) see A
Agreed. A more telling graph would incorporate socialized losses, including subsidies, life-and-limb for related industries, quality of life, and life expectancy. I sincerely doubt these costs for the construction, manufacture, and installation of solar panels comes anywhere close to that of petroleum products.
