What do you think about solar power and it's future? I've heard that installing solar panels is cheaper than fossil fuels nowadays so they should be built everywhere

It's very cheap energy only available 20 to 30 percent of the time. It will most likely end up becoming a major source of electricity in the future, but it is used in conjunction with things that can provide energy regardless of weather like fossil fuels, nuclear, or hydro. Solar with enough batteries to be truely 24/7 is much more expensive, and even with enough batteries to do that you would need backup generators in case its cloudy for longer than the battery banks can handle.

>>16706360 (OP)
I've heard it's quiet the investment, but you do get out of it in some years, that's what I've heard. I've seen some interesting takes, where they integrate bateries for storage
>>16706373
>you would need backup generators
kek, or just be plugged into the power grid, I heard people not only store energy but even have enough to "sell" to the power grid, must depend on the case, but still

>massive wave of solar panels installations
>soak up sun energy
>to keep balanced, sun emits stronger light
>everybody surprised global temperature rises
you mad people

>>16706360 (OP)
My dad has a bunch on his mini-clothing "factory". He sells the excess to the government. Says it's payed off and he makes a decent chunk of change.

I live in a country where there's sun 8 months of the year, and we don't have much regulations so it was easy to install, no fuss from the county or whatever.

>>16706533
>He sells the excess
energy*

>>16706533
>>16706534
the regulations usually come from gas/oil companies, that buy the politicians that pass laws to penalize and over-tax renewables, it has happened here in my country

>>16706533
>>16706534
Also my grandmother lives in Greece and her whole apartment building (20-22 units) has solar water heating. Most of the apartments in her neighbourhood have this if not all. Greece is famously sunny for most of the year.

>>16706537
There's no issue with that here. After the EU stopped buying cheap gas from Russia they've been "struggling" so they need all the help they can get lol.

>>16706540
just know that it only takes one bad apple to screw your country over, off course they get paid for it, they care little if they screw over their whole country

>>16706542
Yeah I know, we might be adopting the Euro in the next 2 years. It's literally over imo. We had a good under the radar (poor) run.

>>16706360 (OP)
It's not so much about solar panels anymore, but energy storage. Once batteries are cheap and plenty, there will be no end to solar dominance.

>>16706559
Yes, I also think this 100%. The next great leap forward will be when there's a breakthrough in energy storage.

Lefties be like "GOTTA PROTECT THE ENVIONMENT"

>>16706816
>le left wing and le right wing
2 bluepilled 6 me

>>16706360 (OP)
If you have another person install it, it takes ~15 years to recover the cost.

If you do it yourself, it takes ~5 years, after which you're saving thousands each year

>>16706360 (OP)
It's not there yet, but probably will be the future. But for now, they still need to fix
-Panel efficiency
-Battery storage
-Recycling waste

>>16706360 (OP)
it's russophobic

>>16706360 (OP)
it's clean fusion power and that's great. energy storage should be the main focus now.

Look at an gas powered electric generator.
Where are the electrons coming from?
If it were a water pump, it would be pumping ambient water from one container to another or around itself back into the container.

So where are the electrons coming from in an electric generator?
Electric "Energy" is "electrons in motion". The motion is the energy you extract.

Think of your atmosphere as a sea of electrons spaced apart by a voroni pattern of mutual electromagnetic repulsion. An electric generator (pumped motivator) sucks in electrons and pumps them elsewhere. AC power is basically wave motion (sucks in water/electrons, pushes out water/electrons) or rotary motion pumps (think of a vortex going down a drain, or a hammer in a water pipeline rotating in place).

NUCLEAR FUSION.
What conditions help nuclear fusion? Atoms have protons & neutrons with an orbiting electron probability cloud. Those electrons help prevent fusion events from occuring. Ergo, a bunch of atoms MINUS ELECTRONS will be considerably more likely to undergo spontaneous fusion. So you need a device that pumps away electrons and leaves atoms with almost no electrons. One easy answer is positrons. Think of a faraday cage box with many outwards pumping diodes, a container of acid inside, and you pump away electrons until energy is emitted.

>>16706376
>I heard people not only store energy but even have enough to "sell" to the power grid, must depend on the case, but still
That was fairly popular when solar was expensive, but now that it is more accessible, many utility companies stopped buying power from residential sources because they were paying far too much back during peak sunlight and couldn't recoup the costs.

>>16706376
The backup generators applies TOO the power grid, its technically (and in a few years will sometimes even be economic) to go vast majority solar and batteries, but you end up with protracted cloudy periods impractical to cover with batteries so solar power is always backed by something like deisel or natural gas.

>>16706852
This is what I don’t get. If it takes 10-15 years to break even you could just put the money you would have spent on solar panels, say 10k into an s&p500 index and in 10-15 years you would have 20k instead of a big eyesore that’s ready to junk but hey at least it paid for itself. As an investment it makes zero sense, it’s an expensive virtue signal

>>16707159
true, in real cost calculations for utilities and stuff they take this into account

>>16707159
And live a life without electricity? Wut. But really, if you're paying 100 per month on electricity normally, you could just put the solar panel on a loan and pay the $100/m without any loss.

>>16706376
>I heard people not only store energy but even have enough to "sell" to the power grid
That's more to do with government programs. The power that's "sold back" to the grid is out of phase and bringing it back in phase is an expensive, lossy process.
It's kinda like water companies treating your wastewater. Ofc they'd rather not deal with your shit water. But the government tells them they have to.

>>16706360 (OP)
>what do you think about solar power and it's future?
It's great. Cheap and clean energy.
>so they should be built everywhere
That's more complicated. Every country has particular energy needs and particular supply capabilities. Especially when dealing with variable renewable energies, you have to take into account the rest of the grid and how supply and demand fluctuate over the day. That's not a coy way to say "solar bad" like the storage parroting, but its adoption has to be better planned than just "building it everywhere" and potentially overloading the grid. Ideally you would match it with an adjustable renewable source like hydro, but the reality of most countries is that they still compensate for fluctuations in VREs with some kind of thermal plant (coal/oil/gas).

>>16707225
>solar excess goes into batteries/hydrogen
whata boat this?

>>16707227
It could work. In fact I'm working in a project that aims to make hydrogen generation with wind energy more viable. But batteries aren't the most economically attractive solution yet, hydrogen even less so. And it's hard to predict when exactly that will change.

It is a form of human development that severs dependence on neglected infrastructure, a problem that we can't solve until a change of government. In Morocco they install them on mosques and they provide power to entire communities, not just individual households. There is also a mosque in New Jersey doing the same. There are other useful forms of local alternative power like wind and hydro. I think these are particularly powerful when used to serve the needs of an entire community rather than just an individual household.

>>16707239
Civilization must develop into the future. We can sever our dependence on oil on a local scale and a nationa scale. Scotland uses 10.9% fossile fuels, 25.7% nuclear, and 61.8 percent alternative energy. The major challenge is developing these technologies for agriculture and commerce we depend on. 90% of the world's goods are transported by sea, by oil, are transported over land by oil, and large scale agriculture depends on machines that use oil.

>>16707238
what's uneconomic about hydrogen? just put electricity into water and you have hydrogen

>>16707248
>just put electricity into water and you have hydrogen
I've been told not to do this

>>16707247

>national scale*

>fossil fuels*

This is a very noble scientific endeavor, as our world is mired in deadly conflicts over oil as a strategic resource.

Oil is the most important commodity of our time and is the fuel of modern society and development.

Our roads are made of it, the vehicles on the road run on it, our lights are powered by it, our food supply chain depends on it.

If we can develop technologies that sever our dependence on oil, society will transform. If we experience an oil crises, such as astronomically high prices incurred by war or foreign policy, mass starvation can occur.

Woodgas is an often overlooked technology for local scale energy production. It functions like a gas generator and can be stationary as a source of electrical power or used to power tractors and trucks.

It is appears in strange places. Woodgas trucks are found in North Korea, rural America, and in a FEMA manual that is deigned for such an oil crisis that could incur mass starvation.

>>16707255


>It appears in strange places. Woodgas trucks are found in North Korea, rural America, and in a FEMA manual that is deigned for such an oil crisis that could incur mass starvation.

People that depend on woodgas trucks do not need to buy gasoline. It also provides a source of emergency power without the need for fossil fuels.

>>16707257

>designed* for such an oil crisis that could incur mass starvation

So many spelling errors from typing too quickly. Just think woodgas is neat and underutilized.

>>16707253
funny, but that's how electrolysis works, pic rel, even thirdies can do it in a DIY way

>>16707255
we'd do it with just hydrogen, if we wanted to, aka if the big oil industry didn't push its hardest against it, hydrogen is a fuel you can generate with just water and electricity

I heard one of the big bitcoin mining CEO’s saying he was gonna build Solar panels with built in bitcoin mining so you won’t need a battery or even a grid connection to get paid for any excess energy. That sounds like a good idea

>>16707248
To put it simply, electrolysers are still unjustifiable from a market standpoint. For energy companies, the cost of installing renewable energy infrastructure without the electrolysers is low, and the value of energy sold as eletricity directly to the grid is still higher than if they stored it in hydrogen cells to sell it. It's an extra investment that gives you a product (hydrogen) that will be sold for less than the other alternative (electricity).
Engineers have to keep working on making the generation systems more efficient, but we also depend on whatever the fuck happens to the market, naturally or from government intervention. Incentives for increased hydrogen demand, subsidies for green hydrogen projects, anything that would affect the costs of production and sale value will be critical. But if I could predict markets I'd be on a sailboat in the middle of the Atlantic right now.

>>16706816
lol, chinks

>>16707789
The funny thing is it's so polluted the sun doesn't really penetrate the smog that much.

This looks fucking insane and ugly and it's probably bad for the environment.

>>16707257
i mean yeah, biofuels can run thermal power plants to backup solar power. This isn't anything new I would be suprised if someone isn't doing that already, its just civilisations energy demands far outstrip what can be provided with biofuels alone and harvesting plants isn't free

>>16707225
nuclear reactors heat a big thing, steam power plants draw heat off of thing as needed to balance solar and wind.

problem solved

>>16707269
what needs to be checked here is if that energy you generate is better spent mining (I personally doubt it) than selling the energy directly

>>16707572
yes, I get your point, I don't know the math honestly, but electrolysis sounds like a good idea and complementary system to batteries, at the very least no rare components (like lithium just as an example) involved, just water and electricity. On top of that you can just load that shit into an engine (not too different from a standar combustion engine, in fact you can make it work, but corrosion will show up eventually). Idk, seems pretty straight forward to me.

>>16707807
biofuel can be generated by human waste, like food waste and literal shit and biomass that fall to the ground from the trees, there are actual facilities that do this, they're funded by greenies, but they do produce energy, don't ask me about the ratios and yadda yadda, all I know is that they exist and work

>>16706545
>we might be adopting the Euro in the next 2 years.
Wya?

>>16707842
i think its a good idea, i live in a rural area so I am somewhat of a "burn anything and try to power shit with it" enthusiast myself. There just isn't really enough biomass to go around to satiate all our energy demands, but if we have enough other renewables and nuclear power maybe they could top off the energy mix for things where it absolutely HAS to be a burnable hydrocarbon fuel without needing fossil fuels

>>16708811
by "has to be a combustible hydrocarbon fuel" is stuff where batteries don't have the energy density and you can't plug into a power grid, airplanes, trucks or long range cars, a backup generator. It's possible to turn digester gas and wood into liquid fuels chemically, so someday I think if we make more shit electric and switch electricity away from coal and gas, the shit you can't do with anything besides oil or oil substitutes could be handled by biomass since it would be a small fraction of the worlds energy use.

>>16708788

>>16708852
Good luck pal

>>16707258
>Just think woodgas is neat and underutilized.
We had a wood gas general over in /diy/ a while ago, pic. related.

>>16708931
Thanks, but it's most likely over. At least I bought a house in 2019.

>>16706360 (OP)
Go to Helios One and speak with Mr. Fantastic

>>16710159
Your observation is an idiotic one. Anything biomass does not scale. If you look at the global biomass turnaround and make the best case but utterly retarded assumption that during the carboniferous all biomass was and until present remained sequestrated and compare it with humanities current usage of fossil fuel you'll see that in only one year humanity burns through 400 years or biomass sequestration. And this is under ridiculous assumptions like 100% sequestration and absolutely lossless. In reality sequestration was probably single digit percent at best. Assume degenerates are going to stick with their energy intensive lifestyles. Then explain how is it going to make a dent?

>>16710311
>Your observation is an idiotic one.
My observation was that we have had a wood gas general. That is objetively the truth.
>Anything biomass does not scale.
It doesn't have to, it just has to be sufficient for its niche. That is all. The problem in these debates are people like you, people who demand a one solution to fit all niches.
>If you look at the global biomass turnaround
Got any good sources? What I foundwas a lot of words and few figures.
>and make the best case but utterly retarded assumption that during the carboniferous all biomass was and until present remained sequestrated and compare it with humanities current usage of fossil fuel you'll see that in only one year humanity burns through 400 years or biomass sequestration.
So what? Oil is being depleted, wind and solar are increasingly used and there is still a market for extracting energy from burning waste.
>Then explain how is it going to make a dent?
Wood gas can very well have a niche in places where there is a lot of wood or waste.