
Energy Slaves - bigato
http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/energy-slaves/
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zamfi
This is cute. But the conclusion is wrong — we can actually generate as much
energy as we are currently using directly from sunlight.

It’s not trivial — costs $1X trillions, covers lots of land (a 300-mile
square!) and will take a long time. But then, we have more paved roads than we
would need land covered by solar farms, so it’s not a completely ridiculous
amount of space.

We don’t necessarily need to sacrifice lifestyle to use energy sustainably. We
just need to stop burning fossil fuels pumped/mined from underground.

~~~
anonymous5133
If it was such a great investment, wouldn't everyone be running to install it
more or less? I live in Southern California (prime location for solar) and so
far by my calculations, it does not make economic sense to install the panels.
The economics are better if you just assume you have to pay for the panels and
exclude labor, installation etc.

~~~
Lazare
Pumping a barrel of oil out of the ground costs about $10 in Saudi Arabia, and
gives about 1600 kWh. Electricity generally costs around $0.10 to $0.25 per
kWH, so if you do the math, you can see that's just enormously profitable.

Renewable energy cannot compete directly with that. For some rough numbers,
you'd expect about 150 hours of usable sunshine a month (depending where you
are), so to generate a barrel of oil worth of power per month, you'd need
around 10 kW of solar panels, which will cost around ....maybe $35,000 to
build. (Then add a few more $k for batteries, controllers, whatever...)

These numbers are super rough, and vary a lot, but just as a general order of
magnitude thing, obviously it's better to pay $10 to pump a barrel of oil out
of the ground every month than it is to pay $35-40k upfront to build a solar
system that generates the same power; it'd take centuries for the solar system
to even break even (and it's only going to last decades).

BUT. We're obviously running out of oil in general, and cheap oil in
particular, and the cost of solar power is dropping fast. And also, while it
would be extremely _expensive_ (today, at least) to switch to solar and other
renewables for everything, it's a thing we can do. And by the time we really
will have to do it, it may not even be _that_ expensive. And if you factor in
the impact of carbon, the numbers start to look more even.

> If it was such a great investment, wouldn't everyone be running to install
> it more or less?

A lot of solar _is_ being installed; for a variety of reasons domestic rooftop
installations don't tend to make a lot of sense (you didn't have a coal power
plant driving a steam turbine in your basement either), but that doesn't mean
all solar is un-economical.

But no, it's not an amazing investment yet. But it is _feasible_. The comic
essentially suggested that we're squandering our only chance to live beyond
the power of human muscles, and that's far from true. And given the cost curve
on solar panels, it's not even clear we're being too slow to make the switch.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Half that energy will be lost in conversion to electricity, more if used to
move a vehicle.

And recent PPAs for solar in that region are closer to 2 cents, which puts
then roughly on par and the prices are still moving, in opposite directions.
And if you have the sunshine but not the oil then it becomes a no brainer, why
rely on another country with a history of manipulating prices to maximise
their profit when you can generate your own electricity.

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Lazare
The underlying message is good, but the horrifyingly poorly chosen phrasing
overshadows it.

~~~
rabidrat
A lot of that is Bucky's writing style though too.

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rabidrat
> During a single round-trip from North America to Europe, the plane's jet
> engines would burn more energy per passenger than the passengers would be
> able to generate with their own muscles over their entire lifespan.

