Kasz216 said:
Eh.... unconvincingly at best. He mentioned what worked best in a lab... which is somewhat irrelevent considering there is lots of stuff we've been able to do in labs for decades that aren't possible to do now.
High efficiency solar cells of efficiencies in the range of 35% are being used in the real world for concentrator cells. The only reason they are used everywhere is because they are expensive to make, but with concentrator cells you use mirrors to capture tens of square metres of sunlight and focus it on a soalr cell of a few square cms. This is not a lab thing.
Used average spots as a substitute without doing the math with how much would be lost via energy transfer. Ignored where solar roof panels would go since you'd have to force property owners to use and maintain them. Force? I see no need to force. Australia's got a very good feed in tariff system set up, which is achieving above expectations. Ignored that (6 (kW·h/m2)/day) is the average oritented towards the sun... and does not take into account tilting or even things like clouds. That does take into account tilting. I'm currently looking for the final version of an assignment i did, which was considering large scale solar in Africa to power Europe, which used NASA data for insolation (ie the most accurate data there is) and took into account transmission losses. For example... England gets like half of that. Russia and Canada worse then that... not sure how you sell the idea of Solar and wind power in countries like that with ample energy and no decent renewable options. Espeically when global warming actually benefits those countries.
England stands to lose more from Global warming than most other countries "There is some speculation that global warming could, via a shutdown or slowdown of the thermohaline circulation, trigger localised cooling in the North Atlantic and lead to cooling, or lesser warming, in that region. This would particularly affect the areas of the British Isles and theNordic countries that are warmed by the North Atlantic drift."
As for how I sell it there, plain answer is, I don't. I don't really see any need for the world to switch to 100% renewables any time soon. I only was talking about 100% because the OP was. Regardless, the majority of the world has sufficient solar insolation - transmission losses from the sunny parts of USA to the northernmost parts aren't really that bad, and you can supplment that with some wind, hydro and a bit of fossil fuel use up North. If you can only think of Britain, Russia and Canada as countries that can't switch to solar, I would be perfectly happy with those three continueing to use fossil fuels and the rest of the world switch to renewables.
Not to mention the security risks required to have giant long distance transmission lines. Take for example, solar panels in the mid west providing a large amount of power the entire urban east coast in the US. Think what one lucky hacker or terrorist could do... or one tornado for that matter. Ahh, yes. You want to have your cake and eat it too. Solar is not only too disperse to be useful, but too concentrated to be secure. Imagine what a hacker/terrorist/tornado/tsunami could do to a coal (or nuclear) plant.
Ignores the rare supply of mateirals that makes solar panels. (and some parts of wind turbines) Extremely expensive. 1) What part of concentrator cells are you not getting? 2) Solar cells of efficiencies of 27.4% can be made from purified sand. All other ingredients in them are in the parts/million range. 3) Wind turbines with rare materials? Could you please point out which of these components is made from a rare material.
4) As for cost
Note that these figures don't take into account the cost of dealing with the problems of global warming. Regardless, hydro for the win. Wind also is extremely competitive. As for solar, it is currently more expensive, yes. But fortunately, people like me (I'm a very small cog in a very big machine, but I'm doing my bit) are putting in a lot of thought and effort into reducing this cost. Infact, moar graphs.
(Note the log scale btw) Also, the rare matierals needed to make batteries that can handle the energy for cars and such. Apparently not enough in the entire world to make cars 100% electric. Indeed, and that's why we need to drive less, and drive smaller cars. Again, the only reason the link in the OP was talking about 100% was to strawman renewables. The only reason I continued to talk about 100% was to prove that even that incredible goal was nowhere near as hard to reach as the link in the OP implied. Likely, mainstream adoption of electric cars will have to wait till the boffins create a room temperature superconductor. In otherwords... he's ignoring a ton of real world factors. All covered now And don't get ? You think Russia will be willing to go from me started with Russiaenergy exporter to heavy energy importer? Willing doesn't even come into it. If no-one buys their products, they can't continue selling them. Thus, due to no willingness on their behalf, they have stopped being energy exporters. As for wether they would then start importing energy, I frankly don't care. As I have already said, we don't need 100% renewables in order to save this planet.
I'd say MacKay isn't the one who came up with the conclusion before the data... it was the Bachelors student who's career will revolve around the popularity of said energies.
You've got cause and effect mixed up. I majored in renewable energy after I had reviewed enough evidence to see that renewables are needed, and are feasible. If literature and common sense implied either that renewables were not feasible, or that they were not needed, I would currently be doing honours in mechatronics, building robots or some shit. |
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