
Solar Surpasses Gas and Wind as Biggest Source of New U.S. Power - adventured
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/solar-surpasses-gas-and-wind-as-biggest-source-of-new-u-s-power
======
gwbas1c
Even with a tariff on panels, the cost of a solar installation, with
incentives, is still significantly cheaper than grid electricity.

With federal and state incentives, my panels work out to about 4-5 cents a
kilowatt hour. Normally I'd pay about 17 cents a kilowatt hour.

(This makes running a space heater cost about as much as running a natural gas
furnace.)

Furthermore, my panels are financed with a fixed-rate loan instead of tied to
market price of energy. That means the cost will never go up, but instead go
to zero at the end of the loan.

~~~
acidburnNSA
With free fuel and falling supply chain costs this is all well and good. Worth
noting is that the value of solar electricity goes down fairly sharply as a
function of market penetration because of the intermittency. Once you start
adding massive chemical electricity storage costs and environmental impacts
get more gnarly.

~~~
bunderbunder
I'm curious to know why other storage methods aren't taking off more. I would
have assumed that the long-term costs of something like hauling something
heavy up a hill (which could easily be a manmade earthworks in flat areas)
would be quite a bit lower, on account of the equipment in question having a
longer life span than batteries.

~~~
pjc50
The energy density of gravity storage is _terrible_. But there's still a few
plans for it:

[https://www.wired.com/2016/05/forget-elons-batteries-fix-
gri...](https://www.wired.com/2016/05/forget-elons-batteries-fix-grid-rock-
filled-train-hill/)

> 9,600 tons of rock- and concrete-filled railcars up a 2,000-foot hill.

> $55 million

> The Nevada project has a power capacity of 50 megawatts and can produce 12.5
> megawatt-hours of energy.

Using the 4 cents/kWh figure upstream, that's ... $500 of electricity per
round trip.

~~~
StavrosK
This makes me wonder, why don't elevators generate electricity on the way
down?

~~~
oaktowner
Elevators are counterbalanced -- when they are going down, there is a
counterweight going up. So there's less energy than you might imagine being
generated.

~~~
StavrosK
I know, but I can imagine that they would still generate some energy in a busy
building. Then again, I don't really know how much energy they consume.

~~~
Scaevolus
Regenerative braking elevators exist: [https://www.asme.org/engineering-
topics/articles/elevators/w...](https://www.asme.org/engineering-
topics/articles/elevators/what-makes-an-elevator-green) has a good summary.

Having lived in a 17-story building with Thyssen-Krupp "green elevators",
they're terrible! An elevator would break down and require days of maintenance
every couple months, greatly increasing queueing times.

------
kokey
The success of solar (and the end of coal) is really a story of the success of
natural gas. Gas turbine capacity was so cheap to deploy that most of what's
deployed in the past is enough to cover demand, in other words there are very
little 'new' gas generators coming online because they're not needed. Solar
capacity is much slower to deploy, hence why we will see 'new' capacity added
over a long time to come. This is also a good thing, since with gas you still
need to provide it was gas and expand the sources of gas and without carbon
capture of gas generation it still has co2 emissions. However, gas allowed a
massive short term reduction in co2 emissions and displaced coal and will for
a long time fill in where solar can't, until we find a way to store energy
from coal and that way might actually be synthesised gas.

~~~
api
Gas can also be produced from biological and even synthetic processes. There's
been a great deal of research in producing CH4 from CO2 and H2O using surplus
electric power from wind, solar, and off-peak nuclear. That means someday all
our gas turbines could double as battery discharge machines for a giant
chemical battery and the existing gas transport and storage infrastructure
could store and transport renewable energy. That's pretty nice from a recovery
of sunk cost perspective.

Coal and oil can pretty much only be economically obtained from fossil
sources.

~~~
ben_w
> Coal and oil can pretty much only be economically obtained from fossil
> sources.

Given that vegetable oil can be used in a Diesel engine after being used for
deep fat frying fish and chips, and given we currently over-produce food to
the point that obesity is one of our largest health issues, I’m going to have
to [citation needed]-you on that.

~~~
thinkcontext
World yearly vegetable oil production is approximately 200 million metric tons
[0], while crude oil is approximately 250 billion metric tons [1][2].

[0] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/263978/global-
vegetable-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/263978/global-vegetable-
oil-production-since-2000-2001/)

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/265203/global-oil-
produc...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/265203/global-oil-production-
since-in-barrels-per-day/)

[2]
[http://www.opec.org/library/Annual%20Statistical%20Bulletin/...](http://www.opec.org/library/Annual%20Statistical%20Bulletin/interactive/current/FileZ/cfpage.htm)

~~~
philipkglass
[1] says 92.2 million barrels of oil produced per day. [2] says 7.33 barrels /
metric ton.

That would put annual crude oil production at roughly

((92.2 * 10 ^ 6) / 7.33) * 365 = 4,591,132,332 (4.59 billion) metric tons.

The implied answer "crude oil production dwarfs vegetable oil production" is
still valid even after correcting the crude oil numbers, of course.

~~~
thinkcontext
Ack, I multiplied instead of divided. Thanks for the catch.

------
mchannon
With the appearance of the "duck curve", utility providers and customers are
going have to reckon with the fact that a kWh of solar electricity at the noon
hour is not worth the same as a kWh of solar electricity at 5pm.

So long, dinosaur coal plants. My lungs are looking forward to solar eating
the rest of your lunch.

~~~
ben_w
Isn’t this a 75% solved problem, because power generation and use were already
out of sync due to people not working at night and a significant fraction of
power generation being fixed-output such as nuclear?

~~~
opencl
No, power generation and use are definitely not out of sync today. Generation
is very very tightly synchronized to usage and has to be for the grid to work
at all without storage. Quite a bit of effort goes into managing generation
output in real time to maintain proper voltage and frequency.

The solution is storage, but at current pricing the amount required for a full
renewable grid would be obscenely expensive. Luckily battery prices have been
dropping quickly for years and continue to do so.

~~~
crdoconnor
Grid battery storage is a pretty mediocre solution to variability in supply
from renewables except in a few cases (e.g. where pumped water storage is
readily available). It's expensive and inefficient.

Market driven demand side flexibility is not very well tapped, doesn't require
any technological leaps and there's a lot of room for improvement there. For
example:

* Aluminum smelting plants that vary their usage depending on spot cost (actually already happening in Germany).

* Smart electric storage heaters that turn on when electricity is cheap.

* Smart electric vehicle chargers that take electricity spot price and current charge levels in to account when deciding when and how much to charge.

* Hell, even bitcoin miners.

~~~
toomuchtodo
When there are millions of EVs on the road charging by day at workplaces and
discharging at night at consumer homes, I don’t think they’ll be observed as
mediocre solutions.

~~~
sfsafsaf
And killing the car's battery with extra cycles and leaving the commuter with
an uncharged battery in the morning.

~~~
tachyonbeam
Two things:

1\. Cars have very very large batteries. You'd be hard-pressed to use more
than a third of the capacity of a high-end Tesla Model S over night (100
KWh!). Sure, maybe you're driving a Nissan Leaf and its battery is only a
third of that capacity, but in a few years 100 KWh might actually be common.
What if you want your car battery to be at 100% in the morning so you can go
on a roadtrip? Just make sure your car is aware of it.

2\. There's going to be a marked for used batteries from old, retired electric
cars. You might only need 20-40 KWh of remaining capacity to live comfortably
in a fully off-the-grid solar setup.

------
reacharavindh
A dream would be to have onshore and offshore windmills where it makes sense,
solar panels on most residential and commercial roofs, panels serving as roofs
for car parking lots, hydro power generators where water flow needs to be
regulated, and to supported such a renewable power generation - connected
micro grids with local battery warehouses to serve as a power buffer.

Some centralised govt provided services could be run on "excess power" such as
pumping water to a overhead storage for a local community, or powering a water
purification or sewage cleaning plant to run during periods of excess power.

Now, I need to wake up and go get a coffee :-)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _solar panels on most residential and commercial roofs_

If one's aim is progressing along the Kardashev scale [1], then the single
metric to optimize is the cost, including of externalities, of energy. Rooftop
solar seems doesn't seem to scale as efficiently, both in measured and
externalized environmental costs ( _e.g._ installer safety and carbon
consumption), as utility solar.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale)

~~~
reacharavindh
Admittedly naive ask. I hear this argument that residential solar panels are
not very cost-effective. A former colleague once told me that after Government
subsidies, his break-even point for solar investment was 12 years. I didnt ask
him at that time. I'm assuming he was referring to energy buyback from his
utility provider for his math. Isn't that against their business incentive to
support residential solar?

If one has a house, and covers the roof with self-purchased solar panels, and
hooks them up to a large enough battery-box, wouldn't it just be "I saved the
cost I would have paid as my utility provider's bill"? That way the return on
investment is more manageable and is without being held at the mercy of the
power companies?

~~~
gm-conspiracy
Also, these calculations seem to assume electricity costs will remain
constant, and not increase.

~~~
francisofascii
Also assumes the cost won't go down. I fear utilities will start jacking up
monthly customer charges and keep rates low to avoid paying solar customers
for generation.

------
sigzero
I'm curious if anyone has gone the Tesla Solar Roof route?

[https://www.tesla.com/solarroof](https://www.tesla.com/solarroof)

------
dalbasal
Here's what I'm looking forward to: a world where energy<>pollution.

This whole period where energy production as our greatest environmental
problem has promoted the wrong type of thinking. It's Energy austerity, the
need to take steps back, slow or reverse progress.

Since technology, industry and energy are so closely coupled, this has almost
made futuristic thinking politically incorrect, or at least unpalatable. I
want to get back to a future that's futuristic, where we can build 100X
bigger, desalinate sweetwater rivers, have floating stuff all around us....

Basically, I want to get back to the old curve, where we make more energy
every year and that's a good thing.

~~~
nickik
Non of this thinking is even futuristic. It was futuristic in 50s.

Look at France. They solved this problems in the 70/80 with technology from
the 50/60.

The problem is utter stupidity of both the population and politics.

There is absolutely no problem. Nuclear energy is utterly inexhaustible for
the next 1000 years, it uses almost no resources (in terms of land, steel,
water) it causes absolutely no pollution at all.

[https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&rem...](https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=FR)

Why not copy what clearly works? Why does everybody invent something new when
we invented something 70 years ago.

We would finally have the energy to do things like desalinate sweetwater and
synthetic fuels.

~~~
cfadvan
I’m very _very_ pro nuclear, but you’re sort of bullshitting here. No
pollution? Most people would consider nuclear waste to be polluting, and
nothing is perfect, sometimes you get a Fukushima. It also pollutes down the
line when you’remining Uranium and processing fuel, and for now even with
perfect safety that’s unavoidable.

It’s still a much better choice than anything else, and it pollutes _less_ ,
and modern designs can be very safe. We’d actually be safer, since we could
replace older, unsafe designs with modern ones. We still need a political
solution to the waste problem though, and I have no idea how that can be done.

~~~
nickik
> Most people would consider nuclear waste to be polluting

Then 'most people' don't know what pollution means. Nuclear 'waste' is a
controlled output of a process that can and is controlled to not effect the
environment in any way.

In terms of nuclear arguing what 'most people' believe is utterly pointless
because 'most people' don't understand even the basics of nuclear physics.

> and nothing is perfect, sometimes you get a Fukushima

Nothing is perfect. But somehow people don't point to all the deaths that
happen on solar installations and so on.

The fact is that nuclear is the safest form of energy.

~~~
soundwave106
People are somewhat irrational in nature and fear rare, but spectacular events
more than the mundane. This is the number one problem with nuclear that I see
it: no other power source has had anything on the scale of Chernobyl. The only
thing that I think offhand could come close as far as potential deaths is a
hydro dam collapse.

The reality is, we are all human, the world loves to throw unexpected
surprises at us (such as the tsunami that helped cause Fukushima). So a Level
7 event is always a small probability. Even if it is much less of a
probability than fossil electricity accidents and the issues from pollution
overall are worse for fossil fuel, it's a hard sell because of the ways humans
are wired.

It also doesn't help that the technology is mysterious to a lot of people as
you mention. "Flammable material burns, makes energy" is somewhat intuitive to
most people. Nuclear is not intuitive at all. Just think at how Hollywood
tends to depict nuclear in the popular lore. :)

At any rate, my personal reason I think nuclear will never gain much traction
in this modern world is that one of those "potential surprises" is terrorism.
Nuclear plants are an acknowledged target. So at the very least, you have to
add costs to safeguard the structure and really beef up the security around
the plant these days. IMHO this would make any big central nuclear power
solution quite a bit much less attractive.

~~~
vkou
> People are somewhat irrational in nature and fear rare, but spectacular
> events more than the mundane. This is the number one problem with nuclear
> that I see it: no other power source has had anything on the scale of
> Chernobyl. The only thing that I think offhand could come close as far as
> potential deaths is a hydro dam collapse.

You don't need to think of the potential. We have already had power generation
accidents far worse then Chernobyl. The Banqiao and Shimantan Dam collapse in
China killed 170,000 people, and destroyed the homes of 11 million more.

And if you want to rank energy safety by KWH generated, you can look at:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents)

We've also had a pipeline explosion that killed a thousand people, we have
five Chernobyls every year thanks to the poor safety record of coal mining...
The list goes on.

------
nl
And it's going to get even bigger.

Just yesterday they announced a 2.49kW/h deal for solar in Arizona[1]. That's
cheaper than the "low" price of wind power (which is the cheapest source).

[1] [https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/06/11/lowest-approved-
solar...](https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/06/11/lowest-approved-solar-power-
contract-in-the-united-states-2-49%C2%A2-kwh/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#Lazard_\(2017\))

~~~
abainbridge
Wow, that's cheap.

To give some perspective, an average cyclist can sustain about 100 watts, so
generating a kilowatt hour takes ten hours. You'd then need to eat about $5
worth of food to compensate for the exercise.

So buying this electric is 200x cheaper than generating it yourself with a
bicycle!

At this point I'd like to start a flame war about the CO2 impact of cycling
;-)

------
JudasGoat
To put things in perspective. The amount of solar power produced in the US is
roughly the amount estimated to be used in indoor cannabis growing.
[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9a3bd8/growing-
ma...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9a3bd8/growing-marijuana-
uses-1-percent-of-americas-total-electricity-industry-says)

------
zer0faith
Is there a DIY on powering a whole house using solar panels that are
independent of any company?

~~~
EADGBE
Sure there is, scale it yourself.

I like Misouri Wind and Solar ([https://mwands.com](https://mwands.com)). I've
also looked into Wholesale Solar
([https://www.wholesalesolar.com/](https://www.wholesalesolar.com/)) which
focuses on DIY installation and design.

------
announcerman
I wonder how will these new green energy sources affect the petrodollar once
electric means of transportation start becoming commonplace. Will it have a
big impact?

~~~
seren
Transportation is still 92% petroleum

[https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_home](https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_home)

It will take some times to replace all existing vehicules by EV. So it might
be a bit early to ask the question.

~~~
Retric
Prices are heavily linked to demand, further if demand starts to drop
significantly some producers will try to dump as much as possible before their
supply becomes 'worthless'. On the other hand many suppliers are rapidly
running out of oil.

IMO, it's going to get interesting.

------
paidleaf
What clickbait nonsense and misleading nonsense.

Solar accounts for 1.3% of our electric production.

[https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427)

Saying that solar is the biggest source of "new" US Power is like if bill
gates picked up a penny from the street and bloomberg saying picking pennies
from the street is bill gates' biggest source of "new" wealth.

I understand being pro-solar, I am too. But why is HN and much of social media
rife with lies and misrepresentations about solar?

Reading bloomberg and HN, you'd think solar was a significant contributor to
energy and coal was dead. But that's just factually incorrect. And they been
lying for years now. But most importantly, it's the scientific lies about
energy production and solar that is bothersome. As if solar panels are the
answer for coal.

Natural gas ( a fossil fuel ) is why coal has leveled off ( not died but
leveled off ). Solar had nothing to do with it. And coal is still the biggest
source of electricity around the world and the 2nd biggest source in the US.

Solar energy is going to be a minor part of the world's energy strategy unless
a revolutionary breakthrough happens ( a significant breakthrough on par with
cold fusion ). That's a basic fact of current state of physics.

So sick of misleading clickbait from media outlets like bloomberg.

Edit: If you want a total world view of energy sources.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Bp_world...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Bp_world_energy_consumption_2016.gif)

~~~
durkie
I think the misunderstanding here is that you're talking about _now_ : "solar
is 1.3% of our electric production", "coal is still the biggest source", etc.
This, I believe, is missing the point of the article.

The importance of noting that solar is the biggest source of new power is that
is signifies the economics of power generation have changed. So sure, there's
still lots of coal and there's still lots of natural gas. But if you're adding
new capacity we're at the point where it makes more sense to build large solar
arrays.

So in a sense, this article is noting the beginning of the end for coal and
natural gas. The present percent contribution of solar or coal is not so
important.

~~~
cgriswald
"New" is relative, hence the Bill Gates picking up the penny example. Sure,
it's a _true_ statement the second he picks up the penny, but it's not a
_meaningful_ one. In the case of the article, we are talking about a single
quarter.

~~~
thinkcontext
"New" is certainly meaningful. It gives an indication of where the market is
going, investors want this information. It definitely meaningful to GE's
natural gas turbine division, which has had big losses since demand has been
less than they have forecasted

"Renewables boom is a bust for gas equipment suppliers like GE"
[https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-boom-is-a-
bust-f...](https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-boom-is-a-bust-for-gas-
equipment-suppliers-like-ge/524345/)

~~~
cgriswald
Sure, it has _a_ meaning, but it does not have the meaning implied by the
title, hence clickbait, which was paidleaf's point.

~~~
thinkcontext
The title says "new" and the article discusses new generation. Paidleaf said
the title makes an implication about overall generation, how does it do that?

------
WalterBright
When I flew to Munich a month ago for the D conference, I was impressed with
all the rooftop solar and stretches of panels out in fields. I didn't do a
count, but it looked like a good quarter to a third of homes had panels on the
roof. Lots of random windmills here and there, too.

------
jonbarker
We need multifamily dwellings with the feature of no utilities bill because of
local renewable energy on site. This would be awesome. The current vision of
the future being sold to us seems to be single family homes with electric cars
in the garage and solar cells on the roof. A horrible use of land and not
really scalable to global population levels given the rise of cities.

~~~
EADGBE
> A horrible use of land and not really scalable to global population levels
> given the rise of cities.

Think outside the bubble, though.

There's unused land everywhere I look.

Why are we dissing zero-emission cars and self-production of home energy?

~~~
dashundchen
> Think outside the bubble, though.

A single family homes and car mindset is the bubble, though.

The US and much of the developed world has a problem of over-consumption, and
shuffling to more power, some green, does not solve it. We need green energy,
but if we want to reduce emissions we need to cut usage as well.

The amount of energy needed to cart single occupancy cars, on hour long
commutes through sprawling suburbs of energy guzzling single family homes is
horribly inefficient, no matter how it's powered. Nearly a third of the energy
consumed in the US goes to transportation.

It makes no sense for multi-ton hunks of steel, plastic and lithium using tens
of kW in energy to transport a 150 lbs person to work.

Denser cities and towns organized around public transit, cycling, and walking
knocks out a multitude of problems.

1\. Reduced distances between home, work, and shopping and allow for
healthier, emission-free walking and cycling

2\. Increased density reduces per capita cost on infrastructure and services
and makes fast, frequent transit a realistic alternative

3\. Denser multifamily development offers efficiencies in shared heating and
cooling systems, a major consumer of energy

4\. Cutting back on sprawl reduces the amount of land developed and
contaminated by development, and frequently preserves productive agricultural
land from being permanently developed

These aren't radical ideas. We have models throughout the world of greener,
denser and healthier cities, mostly built before the auto.

------
kragen
Note that this 13% rise (1Q 2018 over 1Q 2017) is way below the 2010–2015
trend, even discounting 2016; the article shows US photovoltaic installations
growing during that time by 55% per year. Trump is clearly having a huge
negative impact. For better or worse, other parts of the world are not Trump-
restricted, so PV is continuing its exponential trend there.

Paidleaf raises the reasonable question in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17292776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17292776)
as to why it matters when PV is only about 2% of US electric production (and
thus about 0.6% of the total US energy maket). (The 1.3% number paidleaf gives
is wrong; see [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-
environment/wp/20...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-
environment/wp/2017/06/09/the-u-s-solar-industry-is-doing-just-fine-under-
trump-for-now/) for more details, for example.) The reason is that
exponential-growth phenomena, like the adoption of any new technology, are
tiny for a long time until suddenly they aren't. If we suppose a 30% annual
growth rate and an asymptote somewhere well above current world marketed
energy consumption, then three years before PV is the majority of world
marketed energy consumption, it will be only 32%; three years before that,
only 17%; three years before that, only 8%; three years before that, only 4%;
three years before that, only 2%, like the US's current electricity market.

Of course, you could reasonably argue that an immense drop in PV's annual
growth rate from 55% to 13%, or even the SEIA's projected 0% for all of 2018,
indicates that we're already approaching the asymptote! And, if that's true,
of course it's relatively inconsequential what happens with PV — it might
eventually grow from 2% to 4% or 6% or something, but it'll never be a viable
alternative to coal, and at worst it's a dangerous distraction from the
necessary switchover to nuclear power.

But every indication on the fundamentals is that this isn't the case. We
aren't running into limits on energy demand, on raw-materials availability, or
on solar-resource availability. Photovoltaic energy remains cheaper than other
sources, even in the US — that's why it's the majority of new generating
capacity — and panels continue to drop in price, indicating ample raw
materials and a smoothly running supply chain. The majority of even high-
solar-resource land is still not shaded by solar panels.

(I'm not saying that shading the majority of high-solar-resource land with
solar panels is a good thing or a bad thing. I'm saying that a scarcity of
high-solar-resource land is not currently a factor that could cause solar
adoption to level off.)

bcatanzaro comments that the capacity factor for the solar panels on his house
is about 12%
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17293375](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17293375)
and so 55% of new installed capacity is actually much less when it comes to
actual generation. But utility-scale solar's capacity factor is typically
closer to 25% (I guess bcatanzaro didn't choose his house's siting and roof
angle optimally for solar power generation, but utilities can; or maybe he
just isn't dusting them) and the other new generation is almost entirely
natural gas and wind, which generally also have very low capacity factors.

Every indication is that economic development is still solar, and economic
development is still happening, despite the gradual growth of what appears to
be WWIII. It's just that the US is missing out.

~~~
floatrock
> The reason is that exponential-growth phenomena, like the adoption of any
> new technology, are tiny for a long time until suddenly they aren't.

My favorite exponential-thinking thought experiment is imagine a lake that
just got an invasive plant injected into it. The plant has no predators and
reproduces daily, so lets say it doubles every day. If we say the lake gets
completely overrun in 30 days, what day is the lake half full?

There's a fancy formula for this, but you don't need it -- it doubles every
day so it takes all the way until the 29th to be half full.

That's the key about renewables... they're not an extractive technology (where
the more we extract only the more expensive stuff sticks around), they're a
manufacturing technology (where the more we make, the better we get at making
it and so it only becomes cheaper).

------
pjc50
Slightly offtopic, but I do miss the blog
[http://www.theoildrum.com/](http://www.theoildrum.com/) for discussing energy
issues - it had the highest quality discussions of the subject I've ever found
on the internet. Is there a current replacement?

------
mrybczyn
I hope at least some of these panels are manufactured in the USA... Otherwise,
it's another sector of the economy getting outsourced and impoverishing the
north american economy in the long run.

------
nickik
If people on the left had the same obsession with nuclear that they have with
solar climate change would be solved.

Honestly it seems to me like 'liberals' (lack of a better term) are closing
their eyes on this. This eternal year on year constant media bombardment about
the successes of solar energy and in the last couple of years batteries is
totally out of proportion with any realistic view of the current energy system
or any energy system that could realistically exist in the next 10 years.

What is ironic in this whole discussion is that while liberals can never stop
pointing out how France is so much better in terms of health care system and
child care and whatever else. The fact that France has abolished carbon in
their energy production 40 years ago is somehow ignored.

A modern industrial nation abolished carbon in 1970 with technology that is
essentially from the 50/60\. This success if it had been done with solar and
wind would fly on every flag of every news paper and environmentalist poster.

This could easily be repeated today in any other industrialized country.
Switzerland and Sweden currently work like that (just with more water).

What is really sad is that the carbon industry has discovered this in the 70s
already. Carbon based energy producers have long supported anti-nuclear
campaigns because they know it will be incredibly difficult for solar/wind to
remove goal/gas as baseload powers and thus they are only a very, very long
term thread to them. While a nuclear plant could be plopped down right next to
every coal plant.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Nuclear is too expensive (billions of dollars per facility) and takes too long
to build (10+ years), full stop. This doesn't even address the waste storage
issue.

France is going to need to address its expensive, aging nuclear generators at
some point. By then, of course, solar will be much cheaper than it is today,
and there will be more HVDC transmission lines shuttling power between EU
countries.

~~~
nickik
Nuclear is expensive in the US NOW because of insane amounts of regulation,
constant law-suits and the fact that almost no new plants were build in the
last 30 years.

Back before 3 Mile Island a nuclear plant was cheaper to produce then coal
plant and had 2x the amount of live time with 10x cheaper fuel cost.

> France is going to need to address its expensive, aging nuclear generators
> at some point. By then, of course, solar will be much cheaper than it is
> today, and there will be more HVDC transmission lines shuttling power
> between EU countries.

France has the lowest electricity prices in Europe had them for quite a long
time.

Nuclear is not expensive if you are building many of them, just like
everything else.

One of the major problems with nuclear is that it is extremely national and
most western nations don't have a demand for scale.

~~~
nl
_Back before 3 Mile Island_

And then the 3 Mile Island disaster happened, and people tighten up
regulations. That seems reasonable, no?

~~~
toomuchtodo
And Chernobyl. And Fukishima. Yes, nuclear disasters are rare, but when they
do happen it takes extraordinary resources and time to remediate. Solar panels
and batteries fail more gracefully.

~~~
nickik
Even that is overestimated.

Solar panels create mountains of waste, much of it being disassembled by kids
in Africa who then get sick because of it.

Solar production facility can have chemical spills that are comparable to
Three Mile Island in terms of effect.

Compare a nuclear civilization against a solar one and you will see that waste
management of nuclear is far smaller.

Overall less then 2000 people died from these 3 disasters and essentially all
of them because Chernobyl that uses a technology that we don't use in the
west.

~~~
morio
"Solar panels create mountains of waste, much of it being disassembled by kids
in Africa who then get sick because of it."

Source? Electronics associated with solar panels might be an issue but modern
inverters use less and less toxic elements (and are definitely RoHS
compliant).

As for solar panels themselves, 99% by weight consists of glass (75%),
plastics (10%), aluminum (9%) and silicon (5%) which can all be recycled.

~~~
nickik
I don't want solar to be the enemy. I just wanted to point out that its not
quite so simple and that 'nuclear waste' is a far smaller problem then people
realize.

[http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/21/are-
we-h...](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/21/are-we-headed-
for-a-solar-waste-crisis)

