Will Solar energy replace traditional energy sources by 2023?

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/09/solar-installations-in-us-exceed-2-million-and-could-double-by-2023.html

I have been seeing news like this lately that Solar energy will become very lucrative and become a viable and sustainable source of energy by 2023.

And considering this is considered a Green form of energy, could this help with Climate Change?

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Replace traditional energy sources by 2023? Fuck no, no chance whatsoever. The only way I can see that happening is if all the remaining supplies of fossil and nuclear fuel just up and vanished overnight.

As for climate change thing, solar panels don't leak any toxins into the environment while in operation, or they really shouldn't under normal circumstances. Going fully solar most likely won't magically fix the environment, but at least running on solar power won't make it worse. Producing and disposing of solar panels does come with a significant amount of toxic waste, but this can be handled in a way that has little to no effect on the environment.

 

[DarthCoercis]

Somewhere? Maybe. Here in Australia? Not a snowball's chance in hell. Our current PM *loves* coal, to the point where he brought a lump to parliament because, as far as anyone can tell, he thought it disproved climate change.

 

[Hawki]

No. Not worldwide, and not in the US.

 

[Thaluikhain]

As mentioned, nope. There might be a small increase in usage, but currently it's not really an alternative.

Now, plenty of niche areas where the problems of solar (mostly storage) don't apply, but it's just easier to use old-fashioned stuff instead.

 

[bluegate]

No, not that quickly, no country would invest that much money that quickly, at least not for an "invisible" threat like "climate change".

Also, I don't believe that solar alone will be enough to cover the world's energy needs, it needs to be a mixture of solar, wind and hydro-generated, maybe even some geothermal systems.

The sad thing is, investing in renewable energy costs money and the general populus is, to be blunt about it, dumb and it's hard to convince them to stand up against a threat that's not directly biting them in their arse.

 

[Wintermute_v1legacy]

No. Solar energy is a terrible idea because you wouldn't be able to power your house and watch Netflix during the night.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

No. Solar energy is a terrible idea because you wouldn't be able to power your house and watch Netflix during the night.

I don't think that is how Solar Energy work.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Will solar replace traditional energy sources by 2023?


Look, I'm all for solar. But one million solar installations three years ago amounted to 27GW, so two million should sit somewhere in the 50-55GW range. Let's take the average of that range, round it out, and that's 460TWh in a year. In 2017, US energy consumption was 4 petawatt-hours.

We're back up to 2007 levels of energy demand (the downturn in demand being attributable to the recession) and that's going nowhere but up in the near future. Solar growth can't even keep apace with increase in demand, let alone take over the market, let alone by 2023.

Protip: national smart grid.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_home

Also, I don't believe that solar alone will be enough to cover the world's energy needs, it needs to be a mixture of solar, wind and hydro-generated, maybe even some geothermal systems.

Don't forget nukes.

 

[Vanilla ISIS]

"Solar installations in the US exceeded 2 million..."

So basically, the 1% has it.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

So basically, the 1% has it.

If you look at the actual density of solar installation across the country versus actual insolation...yeah, pretty much. Exactly.

My fave are the PNW morons who piss, moan, and spew bile about how the entire country hasn't gone solar yet and how they should follow the PNW's lead by sticking solar panels everywhere...when the PNW is garbage-tier for solar, and the entire thing is basically a naked cash grab.

https://washingtonstatewire.com/windpower-purchasing-rules-sparking-another-fight-in-olympia-green-groups-balk-at-changes/

Washington state produces so much hydroelectric power, the state legislature actually excluded it from its definition of a renewable energy source to manufacture demand for wind and solar. Oh, if that were the end of the stupid, it would be one thing...but it's not. The state does this in part to curtail further hydro development, and won't even allow improvements towards existing hydro's efficiency and production to apply, effectively hamstringing hydro. All of which done to keep solar and wind in business, because otherwise hydro would undercut all of it.

Hardly anyone in PNW is willing to even entertain the notion of geothermal despite being prime real estate for it, because of course they won't. This is one among many reasons I'm on Team Mount Rainier.

 

[Leg End]

It has about the same chance as Mako becoming our primary energy source. As for it being Green? Not really. The manufacturing process and disposal isn't even remotely green.

No. Solar energy is a terrible idea because you wouldn't be able to power your house and watch Netflix during the night.

Joke or not, this relates to Solar being a bad option as a primary source. To store all that power at night, you need batteries. That's not even remotely green either and for many battery types, particularly for those fans of electric cars, those are rare-Earth metals that tend to come from not-so-nice areas. It's an illusion of being green.

The way I see it, the only three power sources really worth looking at right now are Nuclear, probably Geothermal, and Solar being the third but not as a primary. Wind isn't even in the same solar system for the discussion, for a mountain of reasons.

EDIT: Hydroelectric... yeah, put that in with the three worth caring about.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

It has about the same chance as Mako becoming our primary energy source. As for it being Green? Not really. The manufacturing process and disposal isn't even remotely green.

Joke or not, this relates to Solar being a bad option as a primary source. To store all that power at night, you need batteries...

Funny story, but solar thermal solves for both of those issues while being more efficient, applicable, and cleaner than photovoltaic in the long run. Industrial-scale photovoltaic is a high-cost boondoggle that'll never, ever work.

 

[Agema]

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/09/solar-installations-in-us-exceed-2-million-and-could-double-by-2023.html

I have been seeing news like this lately that Solar energy will become very lucrative and become a viable and sustainable source of energy by 2023.

And considering this is considered a Green form of energy, could this help with Climate Change?

Probably not.

The days of fossil fuels are numbered, and everyone knows it. However, they're worth a lot: so every country with fossil fuel reserves is basically going to pump tons out to maximise revenue before it becomes almost worthless.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Joke or not, this relates to Solar being a bad option as a primary source. To store all that power at night, you need batteries. That's not even remotely green either and for many battery types, particularly for those fans of electric cars, those are rare-Earth metals that tend to come from not-so-nice areas. It's an illusion of being green.

The entire concept of a "primary energy source" doesn't work in the case of green energy. The only way of feasibly building an energy economy without fossil fuels is to use whatever energy resources are abundant in a given area with greater transnational inter-connectivity (basically an international energy free market).

Solar power wouldn't be a case of building solar panels on your house to power your TV. In the case of Europe, it would mean building huge solar-thermal plants in the sahara desert and feeding the output into a massive energy grid covering Europe and North Africa (which does already exist.. sort of) specifically to meet the greater demand for electricity during the daytime.

This is also why wind power is actually incredibly crucial to a green energy economy, because the wind will always be blowing somewhere. Once the grid gets large enough, the distribution of wind farms tends to even out variable output into consistent output. Unless the planet's weather and air circulation systems entirely shut down for some reason, there will always be regions which can generate wind power.

The main challenges to such a system are neither technical nor financial, but political. It's entirely doable and entirely achievable. The biggest technical challenge would actually be building the grid infrastructure, not the electricity generating infrastructure itself. Even so, it would ultimately be cost effective.

Geothermal, nuclear and hydroelectric power are extremely limited in application. They're all incredibly expensive and require access to very specific sites or resources.

 

[Kwak]

How about the solar wind instead?

The concept for the so-called Dyson-Harrop satellite begins with a long metal wire loop pointed at the sun. This wire is charged to generate a cylindrical magnetic field that snags the electrons that make up half the solar wind. These electrons get funnelled into a metal spherical receiver to produce a current, which generates the wire?s magnetic field ? making the system self-sustaining.

Any current not needed for the magnetic field powers an infrared laser trained on satellite dishes back on Earth, designed to collect the energy. Air is transparent to infrared so Earth?s atmosphere won?t suck up energy from the beam before it reaches the ground.

Back on the satellite, the current has been drained of its electrical energy by the laser ? the electrons fall onto a ring-shaped sail, where incoming sunlight can re-energise them enough to keep the satellite in orbit around the sun.

A relatively small Dyson-Harrop satellite using a 1-centimetre-wide copper wire 300 metres long, a receiver 2 metres wide and a sail 10 metres in diameter, sitting at roughly the same distance from the sun as the Earth, could generate 1.7 megawatts of power ? enough for about 1000 family homes in the US.

A satellite with the same-sized receiver at the same distance from the sun but with a 1-kilometre-long wire and a sail 8400 kilometres wide could generate roughly 1 billion billion gigawatts (1027 watts) of power, ?which is actually 100 billion times the power humanity currently requires?, says researcher Brooks Harrop, a physicist at Washington State University in Pullman who designed the satellite.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19497-out-of-this-world-proposal-for-solar-wind-power/

We're back up to 2007 levels of energy demand (the downturn in demand being attributable to the recession) and that's going nowhere but up in the near future.

Not if there's a mass die-off of some kind.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

The entire concept of a "primary energy source" doesn't work in the case of green energy...They're all incredibly expensive and require access to very specific sites or resources.

This is the kind of argument I've had for ten years, and gotten nowhere with it least of all to pseudo-environmentalist liberals. Y'know, "there is no global panacea to energy production, solutions have to be regional and based upon comparative advantage balanced against need, and unified by a national smart grid".

This is one of those areas that get me seeing red. When one can divorce the argument from climate change, one can make an entirely independent case for it based upon national security, energy independence, and plain economics, which Republican and Libertarian voters (up to and including climate change deniers) often find surprisingly palatable...and the desired result (a green power infrastructure) is achieved anyways. Alas, no, "environmentalists" get so wedded to the climate change argument they develop severe myopia when it comes to being able to persuade others to their positions, and that failure triggers a built-in tribalist "circle the wagons" response that ends in them being more than happy for the planet to burn just so they can say "I told you so".

Look at the liberal response to the Pickens plan ten years ago. His plan was to phase out petroleum use for transportation in favor of CNG, as a stopgap for developing industrial-scale wind along the wind corridor, and building the infrastructure to support electric transport. Yeah, he's a natural gas man and heavily invested in wind, and therefore had a vested financial interest in his plan. It was still a cleaner plan than maintaining the status quo, relied on developing renewables, and provided a roadmap for the transitional period between now and 100% renewables.

But no, because it still relied upon fossil fuels, it was Literally Satan. No, it's better to externalize the cost of solar PV to former third world countries, stick solar PV panels on everybody's roof, and hope the energy economy underpants gnomes its way to sustainability.

 

[Drathnoxis]

How about the solar wind instead?

The concept for the so-called Dyson-Harrop satellite begins with a long metal wire loop pointed at the sun. This wire is charged to generate a cylindrical magnetic field that snags the electrons that make up half the solar wind. These electrons get funnelled into a metal spherical receiver to produce a current, which generates the wire?s magnetic field ? making the system self-sustaining.

Any current not needed for the magnetic field powers an infrared laser trained on satellite dishes back on Earth, designed to collect the energy. Air is transparent to infrared so Earth?s atmosphere won?t suck up energy from the beam before it reaches the ground.

Back on the satellite, the current has been drained of its electrical energy by the laser ? the electrons fall onto a ring-shaped sail, where incoming sunlight can re-energise them enough to keep the satellite in orbit around the sun.

A relatively small Dyson-Harrop satellite using a 1-centimetre-wide copper wire 300 metres long, a receiver 2 metres wide and a sail 10 metres in diameter, sitting at roughly the same distance from the sun as the Earth, could generate 1.7 megawatts of power ? enough for about 1000 family homes in the US.

A satellite with the same-sized receiver at the same distance from the sun but with a 1-kilometre-long wire and a sail 8400 kilometres wide could generate roughly 1 billion billion gigawatts (1027 watts) of power, ?which is actually 100 billion times the power humanity currently requires?, says researcher Brooks Harrop, a physicist at Washington State University in Pullman who designed the satellite.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19497-out-of-this-world-proposal-for-solar-wind-power/

You stopped right before the idea goes completely out the window.

So far so good, but there is one major drawback. To draw significant amounts of power Dyson-Harrop satellites rely on the constant solar wind found high above the ecliptic ? the plane defined by the Earth?s orbit around the sun. Consequently, the satellite would lie tens of millions of kilometres from the Earth. Over those distances, even a sharp laser beam would spread to thousands of kilometres wide by the time it reached Earth.

?Two megawatts spread across areas that large are meaningless, less than moonlight,? says John Mankins, president of consultancy firm Artemis Innovation which specialises in space solar power. To beam power from a Dyson-Harrop satellite to Earth, one ?would require stupendously huge optics, such as a virtually perfect lens between maybe 10 to 100 kilometres across,? he says.

He also points out that the wire could burn out due to the huge current coursing through it, although he has not performed the calculations to gauge the probability of that occurring. But he does say that a smaller version of this ?clever and interesting? satellite could help power some space missions. ?I could imagine uses for this idea outside of the plane of the ecliptic, such as helping generate power for something like the Ulysses spacecraft, which went around the poles of the sun.?

It's unfeasible because the Earth's magnetic field protects us from solar wind so the satellite would need to be too far away to be practical.

 

[Kwak]

How about the solar wind instead?

The concept for the so-called Dyson-Harrop satellite begins with a long metal wire loop pointed at the sun. This wire is charged to generate a cylindrical magnetic field that snags the electrons that make up half the solar wind. These electrons get funnelled into a metal spherical receiver to produce a current, which generates the wire?s magnetic field ? making the system self-sustaining.

Any current not needed for the magnetic field powers an infrared laser trained on satellite dishes back on Earth, designed to collect the energy. Air is transparent to infrared so Earth?s atmosphere won?t suck up energy from the beam before it reaches the ground.

Back on the satellite, the current has been drained of its electrical energy by the laser ? the electrons fall onto a ring-shaped sail, where incoming sunlight can re-energise them enough to keep the satellite in orbit around the sun.

A relatively small Dyson-Harrop satellite using a 1-centimetre-wide copper wire 300 metres long, a receiver 2 metres wide and a sail 10 metres in diameter, sitting at roughly the same distance from the sun as the Earth, could generate 1.7 megawatts of power ? enough for about 1000 family homes in the US.

A satellite with the same-sized receiver at the same distance from the sun but with a 1-kilometre-long wire and a sail 8400 kilometres wide could generate roughly 1 billion billion gigawatts (1027 watts) of power, ?which is actually 100 billion times the power humanity currently requires?, says researcher Brooks Harrop, a physicist at Washington State University in Pullman who designed the satellite.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19497-out-of-this-world-proposal-for-solar-wind-power/

You stopped right before the idea goes completely out the window.

So far so good, but there is one major drawback. To draw significant amounts of power Dyson-Harrop satellites rely on the constant solar wind found high above the ecliptic ? the plane defined by the Earth?s orbit around the sun. Consequently, the satellite would lie tens of millions of kilometres from the Earth. Over those distances, even a sharp laser beam would spread to thousands of kilometres wide by the time it reached Earth.

?Two megawatts spread across areas that large are meaningless, less than moonlight,? says John Mankins, president of consultancy firm Artemis Innovation which specialises in space solar power. To beam power from a Dyson-Harrop satellite to Earth, one ?would require stupendously huge optics, such as a virtually perfect lens between maybe 10 to 100 kilometres across,? he says.

He also points out that the wire could burn out due to the huge current coursing through it, although he has not performed the calculations to gauge the probability of that occurring. But he does say that a smaller version of this ?clever and interesting? satellite could help power some space missions. ?I could imagine uses for this idea outside of the plane of the ecliptic, such as helping generate power for something like the Ulysses spacecraft, which went around the poles of the sun.?

It's unfeasible because the Earth's magnetic field protects us from solar wind so the satellite would need to be too far away to be practical.

Oh damn, how embarrassing. Oh well. Maybe the earth's rotational or orbital energy can be harnessed somehow. 107000kmph has to be worth something.

 

[Leg End]

Funny story, but solar thermal solves for both of those issues while being more efficient, applicable, and cleaner than photovoltaic in the long run.

Please, tell me more about this space magic.

How about the solar wind instead?

I'm getting SimCity 2000 flashbacks.