Euronews has Orban ties.
Will nations finally see what a geopolitical risk oil is?
I’ve always been supportive of solar. After all, if the Sun goes out, we got bigger problems than charging our cell phones.
I’ve had many, many people over the years tell me it’s too expensive, not efficient enough, etc., and I always said that research will fix all that, and someday it would work great, AND be economical. I never figured it would be because Trump would fuck up the energy economics of the entire planet, and solar would suddenly be the best choice.
I don’t think it was even a matter of research, or it least it hasn’t been for a while, more it’s a matter of scaling production and competitive supply chains.
If there are 15 steps to produce a panel and you need to make 20% profit to pay off the capital expense and cover fixed costs, then the final product is going to be expensive, if the scale is large enough to afford to only make 1% profit at every step things get cheap.
How do you even compare something that generates energy for decades and can then be recycled and generate energy for further decades vs something that you use once and then it’s gone forever?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
calculate total costs of power plant + fuels over the power plant’s lifetime, divide by total kWh produced --> that gives you the average cost per kWh.
it is key here to see that even if solar panels produce energy over and over again, they still have a finite lifetime so they only produce a finite amount of energy per panel. so you can still calculate the cost per kWh by dividing panel cost by total kWh produced. the result then is non-zero because total kWh produced is not infinite.
By price, obviously!
/s (but a little bit not /s?)
I mean, sure, but it’s comparing $ per kWh vs $ per kW
(Total cost of install + total expected maintenance + fuel costs) / expected lifespan
Then divide that by kwh or mwh or GWh expected to be produced during that lifespan
The catch is that solar is outliving the expected lifespan estimated and warranty periods which means things still tilt towards legacy fuels (doesn’t tip enough in their favor to make them less expensive though)
Solar can’t be owned by people and not be completely controlled by a huge company. Solar is decentralized energy and it needs to be embraced way more
Solar can’t be owned by people and not be completely controlled by a huge company.
Think you accidentally added an extra 't
The production of solar panels and mineral can be controlled by groups. It’s not as decentralized as we think, but still better than oil, nonetheless
As well as the permitting policies, tarriffs, and fees for grid-connected solar systems. At least where I am (California), governments and utilities have made solar much more expensive than it needs to be.
It doesn’t matter as long as Big Oil controls policy. Can’t fucking wait for Big Solar to displace them in terms of political influence.
Or for them to just be uneconomical, and there to be no big solar, as it’s lots of competing companies with low barriers to entry.
Everyone is their own big solar; decentralized solar
Guterres also pointed out that fossil fuels still get almost nine times the government consumption subsidies as renewables.
The problem, as always, is not the technology but the politics.
But gas is also more profitable than ever for those involved. Any increase in price gets passed along to down stream consumers, but the margins have increased.
And since the people deciding what electrical generation are getting put in are not the ones paying the final bill, they have no reason to pursue solar at scale.
Some places are installing it at scale, but it’s almost always due to some public mandate, or because the people putting it in are the ones paying for the final power.
Cheaper, takes up less space, and isn’t consumable, but worse because…uh…
Then why is it more expensive when I opt to use renewable (including solar) energy with the electric company?
Oh wait, that’s because none of them actually want people to use it because they make less from it and/or are already so invested in fossil fuels that they don’t want to lose money on their investments so they jack up the costs intentionally to dissuade people from using it.
That’s just my opinion on the matter, I don’t have the data to back it up outside of the electric company here giving you the option to enroll in renewable energy at a higher cost.
Because energy companies are notoriously corrupt the world round.
Renewable energy is “new” for them, so they charge a premium because they know people will pay it even though it is cheaper and it makes them more profit.
Epstein-class garbage in charge of most energy companies.
Its because solar puts more stress on the obsolete power grid.
Installing batteries solves this but we are slow to adopt.
A lot of people don’t realize that for the century + of history that we’ve had electricity, 99% of all electricity produced was consumed instantly on the grid. Essentially none of the electricity we’ve ever produced has been stored in batteries, until very recently.
When you further consider the fact that electricity usage varies throughout the day, you have a problem if the electricity produced doesn’t match the electricity consumed at every moment. Historically this meant actual facilities (at power plants and major substations) where the real time demand is monitored (by human workers) and the available power is continuously adjusted to match the demand.
This was usually not a problem because fuel-burning power plants can be throttled up and down (just like a giant car engine) to produce more or less power as needed. Think of it like pressing harder/softer on the accelerator pedal to deal with stronger/weaker headwinds holding back the car, all in order to maintain a constant speed.
For solar it’s more of an issue because you can’t increase or decrease the power you produce; that’s determined completely by the sun. What you can do is disconnect/reconnect solar panels from the grid, or you can find some way to redirect and use up their power (to charge batteries for example, or to store energy as heat somewhere).
Yup, If solar panels are connected ad hoc to the grid you cant turn them on or off at all, you just have to deal with it. Big spinning generators just cant deal.
It’s not just that but that is part of it. If you’ve ever done electrical load calculations you will find that they can be pretty complex even with a single power source. When you start trying to do capacitance, inductance, or impedance calculations with hundreds of power sources it gets out of hand pretty quickly. That makes what used to be fairly routine design decisions much more difficult to work through.
That’s not to mention the additional danger to workers who need to repair damaged transmission lines. If the electric company shuts off a certain section then it should be safe to touch a line in that area right? Not if there’s active solar panels in the area.
Islanding has always been a problem since portable generators and screwdrivers have existed
This actually makes sense, it would be reasonable if they laid out that information when they send out proposals for using it, especially with more transparency.
Something like “Hey, we would like you to use this advancement in technology but currently the adoption rates are low, and due to that we are financially limited in our ability to update our infrastructure to support this new technology, so the rates are going to be slightly higher to offset that cost which will enable us to update the infrastructure at an accelerated rate so that we can provide electricity to you at a lower cost. Here is our current financial standing and this is what is required for us to be able to completely support the grid in your area. Once this project is complete then your rates will go down to x amount”
At the same time though, they could slightly increase the cost of fossil fuel usage to match the increase they are charging for renewables in order offset the cost of upgrading the infrastructure at an accelerated pace.
I’m quite pessimistic when it comes to things like this, because I believe even if the infrastructure was there the rates would still be as high as using fossil fuels simply due to capitalism. Charging less for electricity (or anything for that matter) due to cheaper production, maintenance, or other factors impacts the money that the rich are getting and it has been shown time and time again that the rich will not accept that.
You ain’t seen nothing yet
