The Solar Power Series
April 8, 2022 6:37 AM Subscribe
So what's the actual purpose of these photos?
They're kinda neat looking?
posted by jedicus at 7:51 AM on April 8, 2022 [12 favorites]
They're kinda neat looking?
posted by jedicus at 7:51 AM on April 8, 2022 [12 favorites]
While the big solar-thermal towers are (spectacular) dinosaurs, there are large PV installations and HVDC pylons stretching across the landscape in the photos as well. Both of those seem relevant to the low carbon future.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 7:53 AM on April 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 7:53 AM on April 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Those giant solar farms out in the middle of the desert, in between LA and Vegas, are a sight to behold. You literally can't even look at the heating towers without eye protection, they're so bright. And there are so many more in planning in an otherwise unproductive (to humans) area. The desert is also a natural habitat that needs protection, but we're at a point where, faced with the choice of trading a little desert for a lot less carbon, it's easy to understand the right choice.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 7:54 AM on April 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 7:54 AM on April 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
In East Lansing, MI, the university there put solar panels over the parking lots. Talk about a WIN WIN - it doesn't use up land, and you get to park in the shade! I would love to see that happen more places.
posted by rebent at 7:56 AM on April 8, 2022 [14 favorites]
posted by rebent at 7:56 AM on April 8, 2022 [14 favorites]
Solar thermal still has a place because it can do something photovoltaics can't without batteries: Shift production. Even when not explicitly designed to store heat, such plants can continue generating electricity from the thermal mass of their heat transfer fluid. They average out clouds and generate for an hour or two after the sun goes down.
Explicitly designing in extra thermal mass in the form of molten salt tanks or even just a big ass tank of propylene glycol or whatever can extend the evening generation even further. This is incredibly important to maximize the ability to effectively use very high proportions of intermittent generation when there are industrial processes that require more predictability.
It's not that big of a deal to turn off an aluminum smelter if you know in advance you're going to have to do it. It really sucks to fix all the shit that goes wrong when the power supply unexpectedly becomes unavailable for more than a short period of time.
posted by wierdo at 7:57 AM on April 8, 2022 [11 favorites]
Explicitly designing in extra thermal mass in the form of molten salt tanks or even just a big ass tank of propylene glycol or whatever can extend the evening generation even further. This is incredibly important to maximize the ability to effectively use very high proportions of intermittent generation when there are industrial processes that require more predictability.
It's not that big of a deal to turn off an aluminum smelter if you know in advance you're going to have to do it. It really sucks to fix all the shit that goes wrong when the power supply unexpectedly becomes unavailable for more than a short period of time.
posted by wierdo at 7:57 AM on April 8, 2022 [11 favorites]
Any resemblance to the Kaaba is surely coincidental
posted by chavenet at 7:57 AM on April 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by chavenet at 7:57 AM on April 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
There's a lot of PV solar farms out here, and a new one is going up a mile from my house. Here in Arizona, it just makes too much sense. I'll say that as much as it's good to get as much PV and wind up and running as possible, the best thing to do is to put PV on as many residential rooftops as possible. That's real estate that's already built. It also directly offsets the use of the property on which it's situated. (We have a 4.2 kWh system and it offsets pretty much all of our use.) We're also seeing a lot of systems go up on commercial properties. A lot of these panels are set up on parking shade structures, so there's a two-fer there - shaded parking helps offset some heated asphalt, so that's a nice added bonus to the solar generation capacity. Once we can figure out battery storage, that's the big game changer right there.
posted by azpenguin at 8:01 AM on April 8, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by azpenguin at 8:01 AM on April 8, 2022 [8 favorites]
When I saw Edward Burtynsky's Anthropocene exhibit I was quite taken with his images of solar tower arrays.
These images scratch more of that itch.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:03 AM on April 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
These images scratch more of that itch.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:03 AM on April 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
Solar thermal still has a place because it can do something photovoltaics can't without batteries: Shift production
Huh, the solar thermal PPAs I could find came in at $60 or $70 per MWh, with 8-15 hours of storage! They'll still have trouble trying to capture those sweet frequency response dollars from the batteries, like anything that has to spin up a turbine, but that's more competitive with PV + batteries than I thought.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 8:16 AM on April 8, 2022
Huh, the solar thermal PPAs I could find came in at $60 or $70 per MWh, with 8-15 hours of storage! They'll still have trouble trying to capture those sweet frequency response dollars from the batteries, like anything that has to spin up a turbine, but that's more competitive with PV + batteries than I thought.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 8:16 AM on April 8, 2022
These are beautiful photos. The ones with the mirrors or panels not all aligned are particularly striking. I assume that's a temporary state, maybe during construction? Or deliberately turning down production?
Flying over Southern California you really can't miss some of these facilities. I have one photo I took myself somewhere near Palmdale.
Photovoltaics are indeed amazing. Unfortunately we're now at the point in California where solar is curtailed because CAISO can't use all the power generated mid-day and there's nowhere to store it. It's not a huge amount of power yet and digging deeper a lot of the problem is "local congestion" which could be addressed with a better grid. But as we keep adding more solar we really need to find some way to either store the power or else shift demand to use it when it's generated.
posted by Nelson at 8:36 AM on April 8, 2022
Flying over Southern California you really can't miss some of these facilities. I have one photo I took myself somewhere near Palmdale.
Photovoltaics are indeed amazing. Unfortunately we're now at the point in California where solar is curtailed because CAISO can't use all the power generated mid-day and there's nowhere to store it. It's not a huge amount of power yet and digging deeper a lot of the problem is "local congestion" which could be addressed with a better grid. But as we keep adding more solar we really need to find some way to either store the power or else shift demand to use it when it's generated.
posted by Nelson at 8:36 AM on April 8, 2022
U.S. solar expansion stalled by rural land-use protests :(
posted by credulous at 8:40 AM on April 8, 2022
posted by credulous at 8:40 AM on April 8, 2022
Oh boy. I'm an investor in this area and I have opinions. There's ways to do this right and ways to do this wrong. And we only find out what works by doing it. The latest IPCC WG3 report is the best summary, so numbers from there. My take is that:
Concentrated solar power is dead. It looks pretty, or at least makes for dramatic photos but it's been left behind.
Since 2015, 5 GW of CSP has been built and current costs (LCOE) are US$100/MWh. In contracts, there's been nearly 1 TeraWatt of photovoltaics installed, hundreds of times more, and current costs are US$50/MWh. [Figure SPM.3 & Fig 2.22]
Yes, renewables need storage, at massive scale and for multiple timeframes: daily, weekly, and seasonal. Building storage capacity is lagging behind building renewable generation capacity. Hence grids that are heavy on solar have too much power at mid-day and not enough for the evening peak. Grid managers can curtail (like Cali, as Nelson notes). This is a waste. Better to let the electricity price go negative, as South Australia does, so that anyone with storage can get paid money to take that electricity away. This makes it profitable to build more storage, which is what we want.
Yes, CSP provides thermal storage in the heat transfer fluid, storing that fluid in an insulated tank, and then using them in the evening. Sadly, that fluid is a molten salt which is horribly corrosive so this approach is too expensive. Instead, there are other cheaper approaches to thermal storage, as well as a host of other technologies.
Right now, almost all storage is pumped hydro. We have about 4 TWh of storage globally and 97% is hydro. That's cheap and a mature technology, but it's hard to build more due to the environmental impact of building huge dams and drowning whole valleys.
The current growth area is lithium batteries. These have dropped in price by 64% in the last five years. They can turn on in milliseconds, making them great for fault response and grid control (eg frequency keeping, which we're needing more now that we have fewer spinning turbines). They need hazardous materials, and wear out quickly. They are still expensive, meaning they are economic for daily storage where you store and release every day so get paid every day. They aren't affordable for longer duration storage. [Section 6.4.4]
Pumped hydro is cheap enough for seasonal storage. The big gap is the middle timeframe - a week of cold, cloudy, still weather. The existing solutions are to have large interconnected grids, on the basis that if it's cold in Texas then it'll be windy somewhere else in the US or hydro generation in Washington will be going flat-out. That's not a great solution and we need better options. (Also the Texas grid has terrible interconnections to the rest of the US, coz politics, but that's Texas for you.)
We're getting more photovoltaics, because they're the cheapest option at scale. This means we need more storage and there's huge money (including my own) going into better storage.
That solar is going onto land, not buildings, because putting it on roofs costs 3-5x more.
That brings problems about land use - the solution is two-fold.
It's a dumb idea to lock away land for a single use so we want co-benefits from solar farms. From the point of view of a farmer, almost every piece of land that suits solar has too much sun and not enough water. Solar creates shade so use that. Put the panels on poles, making a cooler and more humid microclimate for the soil underneath, grass grows better, and run animals underneath.
It creates local resistance when there's local impacts for global benefits, so make sure there's local benefits. Make solar farms locally owned. 42% of German renewable generation is locally owned. There are no land-use protests.
We're doing all of this. We just need to do it faster, before the world burns.
posted by happyinmotion at 2:13 PM on April 8, 2022 [12 favorites]
Concentrated solar power is dead. It looks pretty, or at least makes for dramatic photos but it's been left behind.
Since 2015, 5 GW of CSP has been built and current costs (LCOE) are US$100/MWh. In contracts, there's been nearly 1 TeraWatt of photovoltaics installed, hundreds of times more, and current costs are US$50/MWh. [Figure SPM.3 & Fig 2.22]
Yes, renewables need storage, at massive scale and for multiple timeframes: daily, weekly, and seasonal. Building storage capacity is lagging behind building renewable generation capacity. Hence grids that are heavy on solar have too much power at mid-day and not enough for the evening peak. Grid managers can curtail (like Cali, as Nelson notes). This is a waste. Better to let the electricity price go negative, as South Australia does, so that anyone with storage can get paid money to take that electricity away. This makes it profitable to build more storage, which is what we want.
Yes, CSP provides thermal storage in the heat transfer fluid, storing that fluid in an insulated tank, and then using them in the evening. Sadly, that fluid is a molten salt which is horribly corrosive so this approach is too expensive. Instead, there are other cheaper approaches to thermal storage, as well as a host of other technologies.
Right now, almost all storage is pumped hydro. We have about 4 TWh of storage globally and 97% is hydro. That's cheap and a mature technology, but it's hard to build more due to the environmental impact of building huge dams and drowning whole valleys.
The current growth area is lithium batteries. These have dropped in price by 64% in the last five years. They can turn on in milliseconds, making them great for fault response and grid control (eg frequency keeping, which we're needing more now that we have fewer spinning turbines). They need hazardous materials, and wear out quickly. They are still expensive, meaning they are economic for daily storage where you store and release every day so get paid every day. They aren't affordable for longer duration storage. [Section 6.4.4]
Pumped hydro is cheap enough for seasonal storage. The big gap is the middle timeframe - a week of cold, cloudy, still weather. The existing solutions are to have large interconnected grids, on the basis that if it's cold in Texas then it'll be windy somewhere else in the US or hydro generation in Washington will be going flat-out. That's not a great solution and we need better options. (Also the Texas grid has terrible interconnections to the rest of the US, coz politics, but that's Texas for you.)
We're getting more photovoltaics, because they're the cheapest option at scale. This means we need more storage and there's huge money (including my own) going into better storage.
That solar is going onto land, not buildings, because putting it on roofs costs 3-5x more.
That brings problems about land use - the solution is two-fold.
It's a dumb idea to lock away land for a single use so we want co-benefits from solar farms. From the point of view of a farmer, almost every piece of land that suits solar has too much sun and not enough water. Solar creates shade so use that. Put the panels on poles, making a cooler and more humid microclimate for the soil underneath, grass grows better, and run animals underneath.
It creates local resistance when there's local impacts for global benefits, so make sure there's local benefits. Make solar farms locally owned. 42% of German renewable generation is locally owned. There are no land-use protests.
We're doing all of this. We just need to do it faster, before the world burns.
posted by happyinmotion at 2:13 PM on April 8, 2022 [12 favorites]
42% of German renewable generation is locally owned. There are no land-use protests.
What? Maybe not solar, but opposition to wind power is a major, ongoing issue in Germany. Foro example, in Bavaria, the Minister President remains pretty opposed to wind power and has resisted giving up the "10-H rule", whereby the distance from a wind turbine to the nearest human settlement must be at least 10 times the tip height of the turbine. For a modern turbine that means as much as 2.5km. In a densely settled state (and mountainous where it isn't densely settled) that basically makes commercially viable construction impossible, and as a result Bavaria is Germany's largest state by land area but has the least wind power generation.
Deutsche Welle, The Germans fighting wind farms close to their homes. Wall Street Journal, Germany’s Push for Wind Power Encounters Resistance. Financial Times, Germans fall out of love with wind power. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Nicht in meinem Hinterhof!.
posted by jedicus at 2:55 PM on April 8, 2022
What? Maybe not solar, but opposition to wind power is a major, ongoing issue in Germany. Foro example, in Bavaria, the Minister President remains pretty opposed to wind power and has resisted giving up the "10-H rule", whereby the distance from a wind turbine to the nearest human settlement must be at least 10 times the tip height of the turbine. For a modern turbine that means as much as 2.5km. In a densely settled state (and mountainous where it isn't densely settled) that basically makes commercially viable construction impossible, and as a result Bavaria is Germany's largest state by land area but has the least wind power generation.
Deutsche Welle, The Germans fighting wind farms close to their homes. Wall Street Journal, Germany’s Push for Wind Power Encounters Resistance. Financial Times, Germans fall out of love with wind power. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Nicht in meinem Hinterhof!.
posted by jedicus at 2:55 PM on April 8, 2022
Thanks for your thoughtful comment, happyinmotion. It's nice to read something informed from an expert working in the industry. Particularly interesting to learn how batteries are uniquely good for quick response / daily charging.
To the question of land use there's a lot of potential creative solutions for solar panels. One fun idea is to build solar over water canals, like this new pilot program in California. It's basically free real estate and has the benefit of mitigating evaporation. By no means is this the solution for everything but it's a neat idea.
Storage is also a land use problem, specifically for pumped hydro. There's enormous resistance in California and elsewhere to building any new dams or reservoirs.
posted by Nelson at 3:09 PM on April 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
To the question of land use there's a lot of potential creative solutions for solar panels. One fun idea is to build solar over water canals, like this new pilot program in California. It's basically free real estate and has the benefit of mitigating evaporation. By no means is this the solution for everything but it's a neat idea.
Storage is also a land use problem, specifically for pumped hydro. There's enormous resistance in California and elsewhere to building any new dams or reservoirs.
posted by Nelson at 3:09 PM on April 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Ok, let me re-phrase that, because humans are naturally contentious and you could walk down the street giving out free cash and someone would object.
How about: "there is little land-use protest, what there is has been highlighted by the media looking for contention, what there has been has only occasionally slowed the growth of renewable power in Germany, and given Germany's current dependence upon Russian fossil fuels, the objections being raised will be overwhelmed by the desire not to keep giving billions of euros to a brutal dictator"?
Let's also consider population density here. The US is mostly empty, you'd expect far less land-use objections and yet land-use objections are markedly slowing the growth of renewable generation. Germany is as dense as Maryland, you'd expect land-use objections to louder and more effective, just as they are in the dense UK. Instead, land-use objections are a speed-bump.
Bavaria is a weird glitch. It's not a great place for wind turbines as their wind speeds are lower than the north and coastal regions of Germany. Hence they've got the 10-H as a conservative rallying-point, for right-wing politicians to score political points without too much economic cost.
So if Bavaria doesn't build wind turbines, the rest of Germany and Europe does, and Bavaria imports more electricity. That's probably a good thing, as German wind turbines are more productive in the north.
Whether that political stubbornness can persist in the face of the war, we'll see. I suspect it'll be gone by end of this year.
Poland has the same 10-H rule, a 75% dependence upon Russia for energy, and at today's count more than two million refugees from Ukraine. Everyone can see that something must change. Easiest to change is the 10-H rule.
Nelson: yes, there's other ways for solar to create co-benefits. Putting them above or in water is a good option. This also helps increase the efficiency of the solar panels by keeping them cool. This can easily give another 10% power per panel.
posted by happyinmotion at 3:17 PM on April 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
How about: "there is little land-use protest, what there is has been highlighted by the media looking for contention, what there has been has only occasionally slowed the growth of renewable power in Germany, and given Germany's current dependence upon Russian fossil fuels, the objections being raised will be overwhelmed by the desire not to keep giving billions of euros to a brutal dictator"?
Let's also consider population density here. The US is mostly empty, you'd expect far less land-use objections and yet land-use objections are markedly slowing the growth of renewable generation. Germany is as dense as Maryland, you'd expect land-use objections to louder and more effective, just as they are in the dense UK. Instead, land-use objections are a speed-bump.
Bavaria is a weird glitch. It's not a great place for wind turbines as their wind speeds are lower than the north and coastal regions of Germany. Hence they've got the 10-H as a conservative rallying-point, for right-wing politicians to score political points without too much economic cost.
So if Bavaria doesn't build wind turbines, the rest of Germany and Europe does, and Bavaria imports more electricity. That's probably a good thing, as German wind turbines are more productive in the north.
Whether that political stubbornness can persist in the face of the war, we'll see. I suspect it'll be gone by end of this year.
Poland has the same 10-H rule, a 75% dependence upon Russia for energy, and at today's count more than two million refugees from Ukraine. Everyone can see that something must change. Easiest to change is the 10-H rule.
Nelson: yes, there's other ways for solar to create co-benefits. Putting them above or in water is a good option. This also helps increase the efficiency of the solar panels by keeping them cool. This can easily give another 10% power per panel.
posted by happyinmotion at 3:17 PM on April 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
It’s fine to discuss non-carbon energy here; I myself have a solar PV array. But it’s no knock on the cited article that it focuses on non-PV solar since it’s actually just an aerial photography gallery. The pictures are pretty cool. I saw that Nevada mirror array thing from an airplane window once, and it was a sight to behold, as well as unbelievably bright.
posted by sjswitzer at 4:44 PM on April 8, 2022
posted by sjswitzer at 4:44 PM on April 8, 2022
Storage is also a land use problem, specifically for pumped hydro.
The potential for pumped storage across Europe is so limited this is unlikely to be an issue. Significant storage is likely to be batteries.
That's probably a good thing, as German wind turbines are more productive in the north.
And would be even more productive in another country - cheaper to build and operate and producing more electricity. But getting aligned European energy policy had proven to be really difficult.
posted by biffa at 5:03 PM on April 8, 2022
The potential for pumped storage across Europe is so limited this is unlikely to be an issue. Significant storage is likely to be batteries.
That's probably a good thing, as German wind turbines are more productive in the north.
And would be even more productive in another country - cheaper to build and operate and producing more electricity. But getting aligned European energy policy had proven to be really difficult.
posted by biffa at 5:03 PM on April 8, 2022
One thing that is failing to be addressed overall is the energy efficiency to be gained by NOT using power consuming products and increasing efficient usage of available resources. All I am reading between the lines is 'we need to be better at producing more power' instead of 'how can we develop a way of living without the need to consume so much power'. A simple look around you will show empty buildings and parking lots which are lit up unnecessarily. On my route home there are a series of car sales lots that are illuminated the moment it gets dark. Nobody there. The people who can 'see' it are driving by at 55 mph or more on the same highway as me. Look at all of the devices you have plugged in which are consuming standby power; the battery charger your USB block etc etc etc. Mrs Underpants and I save a wedge and have smug grins on our faces because we did this and now have extra moneys....
posted by IndelibleUnderpants at 7:20 PM on April 8, 2022
posted by IndelibleUnderpants at 7:20 PM on April 8, 2022
The potential for pumped storage across Europe is so limited this is unlikely to be an issue. Significant storage is likely to be batteries.
Even in the US pumped storage isn't going to be a major component because of the issues that were mentioned already. In denser places, or places with simply less water, it is even less of an option.
U.S. solar expansion stalled by rural land-use protests :(
It's not a trivial issue, and dealing with that is keeping a lot of people employed right now, but at the end of the day if renewable energy is desired by a nation or a state/region, you can simply remove the permitting and review process from local jurisdictions. In the US, some states are already doing this, providing an alternative state-managed permitting process that sidesteps counties that are anti solar or wind development. It's similar to the comment above about how removing the "10-H" rule -- if you genuinely want to decarbonize, that means removing barriers to renewables even if local people (whether for good reasons or bad) are opposed.
I think we are still, in most countries, waffling around on this. Developing renewables is theoretically a priority, but not so much so that it gets imposed, usually. With time, I expect to see those barriers continue to drop.
It's a dumb idea to lock away land for a single use so we want co-benefits from solar farms. From the point of view of a farmer, almost every piece of land that suits solar has too much sun and not enough water. Solar creates shade so use that. Put the panels on poles, making a cooler and more humid microclimate for the soil underneath, grass grows better, and run animals underneath.
"Agrivoltaics" (i.e., combined solar and agriculture on the same land) is the hot new topic, but it is tricky in practice. Among other things, solar sites typically are built assuming that they are not impervious surfaces (that is, rain falling on the panels drips off and soaks into the grass-covered ground). Adding in grazing underneath means revisiting those calculations and looking at grazing practices to ensure that you still have infiltration rather than concentrated runoff. Costs go up, for both construction and operations, with taller poles. Panel spacing would need to be changed if you were going to be running standard farm equipment between the rows. Things like that -- it's not unsolvable and definitely is going to be a major part of how local concerns about "taking land out of production" are resolved, but it's also not a simple problem with easy answers.
To the FFP itself:
What does transforming towards more sustainable sources of energy look like? This series explores solar power plants in the United States, France and Spain. These man-made, constructed landscapes represent our efforts of building a more sustainable future in the most sophisticated ways.
The photos are great, thank you for posting. To the text above, though, it is worth noting that most often solar is installed on already-impacted landscapes -- often low-value land that was used for grazing, say. They are already man-made, constructed landscapes, but we tend to think it looks "natural" because there is some amount of vegetation and no buildings or infrastructure.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:14 PM on April 8, 2022
Even in the US pumped storage isn't going to be a major component because of the issues that were mentioned already. In denser places, or places with simply less water, it is even less of an option.
U.S. solar expansion stalled by rural land-use protests :(
It's not a trivial issue, and dealing with that is keeping a lot of people employed right now, but at the end of the day if renewable energy is desired by a nation or a state/region, you can simply remove the permitting and review process from local jurisdictions. In the US, some states are already doing this, providing an alternative state-managed permitting process that sidesteps counties that are anti solar or wind development. It's similar to the comment above about how removing the "10-H" rule -- if you genuinely want to decarbonize, that means removing barriers to renewables even if local people (whether for good reasons or bad) are opposed.
I think we are still, in most countries, waffling around on this. Developing renewables is theoretically a priority, but not so much so that it gets imposed, usually. With time, I expect to see those barriers continue to drop.
It's a dumb idea to lock away land for a single use so we want co-benefits from solar farms. From the point of view of a farmer, almost every piece of land that suits solar has too much sun and not enough water. Solar creates shade so use that. Put the panels on poles, making a cooler and more humid microclimate for the soil underneath, grass grows better, and run animals underneath.
"Agrivoltaics" (i.e., combined solar and agriculture on the same land) is the hot new topic, but it is tricky in practice. Among other things, solar sites typically are built assuming that they are not impervious surfaces (that is, rain falling on the panels drips off and soaks into the grass-covered ground). Adding in grazing underneath means revisiting those calculations and looking at grazing practices to ensure that you still have infiltration rather than concentrated runoff. Costs go up, for both construction and operations, with taller poles. Panel spacing would need to be changed if you were going to be running standard farm equipment between the rows. Things like that -- it's not unsolvable and definitely is going to be a major part of how local concerns about "taking land out of production" are resolved, but it's also not a simple problem with easy answers.
To the FFP itself:
What does transforming towards more sustainable sources of energy look like? This series explores solar power plants in the United States, France and Spain. These man-made, constructed landscapes represent our efforts of building a more sustainable future in the most sophisticated ways.
The photos are great, thank you for posting. To the text above, though, it is worth noting that most often solar is installed on already-impacted landscapes -- often low-value land that was used for grazing, say. They are already man-made, constructed landscapes, but we tend to think it looks "natural" because there is some amount of vegetation and no buildings or infrastructure.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:14 PM on April 8, 2022
All new construction should be required to have rooftop solar. There are just no drawbacks.
I live in Seattle for christ's sake, and have 37 solar panels on my roof. Also have solar thermal which is terrible nowdays for price/performance, but PV? No reason not to.
posted by Windopaene at 9:50 PM on April 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
I live in Seattle for christ's sake, and have 37 solar panels on my roof. Also have solar thermal which is terrible nowdays for price/performance, but PV? No reason not to.
posted by Windopaene at 9:50 PM on April 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
I remember seeing some info a while back on another technology, but I can't quite remember the name.
Concentrated photovoltaics, maybe?
The model being rather than tens of meters of low-intensity PV panels, a parabolic mirrored tracking dish (as for satellite tv), concentrating light on a specially doped 10cm square high-intensity cell?
Maybe a Mefite knowledgeable in the field could speak to that model? Potentially less land use anyway; a series of dishes planted amongst a wind farm, as one plants beans in between corn?
posted by bartleby at 2:53 AM on April 9, 2022
Concentrated photovoltaics, maybe?
The model being rather than tens of meters of low-intensity PV panels, a parabolic mirrored tracking dish (as for satellite tv), concentrating light on a specially doped 10cm square high-intensity cell?
Maybe a Mefite knowledgeable in the field could speak to that model? Potentially less land use anyway; a series of dishes planted amongst a wind farm, as one plants beans in between corn?
posted by bartleby at 2:53 AM on April 9, 2022
I don't care how stupid they actually are. I want my POWER SATELLITES.
But yeah slap panels on all the roofs and parking lots first.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:47 AM on April 9, 2022
But yeah slap panels on all the roofs and parking lots first.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:47 AM on April 9, 2022
Ahoy GCU,
isnt you the one with the mass converters, rectennae and zero-point diode arrays?
Be the change!
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 4:13 PM on April 9, 2022
isnt you the one with the mass converters, rectennae and zero-point diode arrays?
Be the change!
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 4:13 PM on April 9, 2022
Concentrated photovoltaics, maybe?
My dept has done a bunch of work in thsi field. In the variant my colleagues work on its essentially its as you say, but on a smaller scale, instead of getting a full sheet of PV, you get #1 sq cm and place a lens over it, so that it directs light from say 10-12 sq cm on to that 1sq cm of PV. Then you replicate that across a bunch of cells and try to manufacture them at scale to get the costs down. Issues are getting good performance from the lenses, not overheating the cell by having that much sunlight directed to it, and then there is the issue that as the PV costs fall that the savings aren't so big on having used so much less PV. There has been some progress but keeping up with PV prices has meant its not economic as yet, and perhaps the manufacturing isn't there either. I will try to remember to ask about it over coffee some time.
It looks like there is something being tested at higher scale, but i don't know anyone working on this.
The other kind of concentrator is the big scale stuff, as with Sanlucar Mayor in Spain. Not PV, just concentrated solar for generating enough heat for power generation.
posted by biffa at 2:59 AM on April 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
My dept has done a bunch of work in thsi field. In the variant my colleagues work on its essentially its as you say, but on a smaller scale, instead of getting a full sheet of PV, you get #1 sq cm and place a lens over it, so that it directs light from say 10-12 sq cm on to that 1sq cm of PV. Then you replicate that across a bunch of cells and try to manufacture them at scale to get the costs down. Issues are getting good performance from the lenses, not overheating the cell by having that much sunlight directed to it, and then there is the issue that as the PV costs fall that the savings aren't so big on having used so much less PV. There has been some progress but keeping up with PV prices has meant its not economic as yet, and perhaps the manufacturing isn't there either. I will try to remember to ask about it over coffee some time.
It looks like there is something being tested at higher scale, but i don't know anyone working on this.
The other kind of concentrator is the big scale stuff, as with Sanlucar Mayor in Spain. Not PV, just concentrated solar for generating enough heat for power generation.
posted by biffa at 2:59 AM on April 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
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Photovoltaics were an absolute joke for decades, the same way batteries were. Do you remember nickel-cadmium rechargeables? Do you remember zinc batteries? Do you, at least, remember buying a pack of alkalines regularly for your walkman or discman?
But do you remember how all of a sudden lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries showed up, and suddenly laptops and mobile phones and things were possible with more than 20 minutes of charge? Holding ten amp-hours in my hand still feels magical to me. And they all recharge so quickly, now!
It's the same with photovoltaics. You can now do better with a static rooftop panel in London than you used to be able to do with a top-of-the-line sun-tracking system in San Diego 15 years ago.
So what's the actual purpose of these photos? If it's just some great industrial retrospectives of a technology that hasn't got much of a future, that's great. But from what the intro text says, you may as well hold up a bag of zinc D-cells and ask "What does transforming towards more portable technology look like?"
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 7:37 AM on April 8, 2022 [10 favorites]