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Forums - Politics Discussion - Solar Power Is Becoming The World's Cheapest Energy

what if they build the Trump wall with solar panels?



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deskpro2k3 said:
what if they build the Trump wall with solar panels?

Not likely, I bet he'll try to drill oil while they're at it.



Aren't there solarpanels these days that work even on cloudy days?.



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And shepherds we shall be,

For Thee, my Lord, for Thee. Power hath descended forth from Thy hand, That our feet may swiftly carry out Thy command. So we shall flow a river forth to Thee And teeming with souls shall it ever be. In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritūs Sancti. -----The Boondock Saints

monocle_layton said:
maxleresistant said:
When there is money to be made, or to save. That s ehen things finally kicks off.

Great news

Too bad the US still trying to expand the coal and oil industry. 

More money to be made with those.

Like I said, there is only two way to make sure things move, the government intervene and forces people to do it, or people can make a ton of money with it.



haqqaton said:

I don't know much about this (energy sources) but the Pandora's Promise documentary says that nuclear energy is by far the cheapest and the most efficient energy source. Besides, it's the source that have less impact on environment.

By the way, they address the point of nuclear toxic wast and - if it's true - we're being desinformed all along. Again, according to them the toxic waste is incredible minimal.

Yes and no

Most Nuclear reactors where build before the Tchernobyl disaster and are based on 60' Technology (Gen II Reactors). Even those build after 1986 are mostly the same old reactors with some slight upgrades(Gen II+/++). That's because they are cheap both in construction and production, but their safety records are not exactly great. The fact that their lifespan keeps getting extended long beyond their design limit also makes them cheaper, but again even more risky.

More modern designs, created after Three Mile and Tchernobyl massively improved on the safety and eliminated most critical design flaws (Gen III). If Fukushima would have been such a Reactor, there wouldn't have been a Meltdown, the reactor would have performed a controlled shutdown all by itself. Their problem: They are very expensive to build and require very specialized materials. Just check how many years the EPR reactors have been delayed because of material problems: Olkiluoto 3 in Finland was expected to go online in 2009 and is right now projected to do so in 2018, Flamanville 3 was expected for 2011 and ist now probably not going online before 2019. These delays cost their operators billions, and operating them is also much more costly than the old pre Tchernobyl designs. Thus basically all upgrades to these new designs are meant for cost reduction, but in construction and operation (Gen III+)

As for the toxic waste, it depends on which kind of reactor the waste comes from. A reactor using uranium 235 doesn't produce much waste, as most of it gets consumed during the runtime of the Uranium's consuption already, as their half-life is mostly pretty short, and those with longer half-lifes are mostly just weakly radioactive. Waste from breeder reactors which are used to produce plutonium are a different kind however, as it is highly toxic and radioactive. Plutonium in general is actually a strong poison (heavy metal poisoning), and as an alpha emitter higly carcinogenic. But the worst are Thorium reactors, as the Uranium 232, which gets produced as by-product, produces highly radioactive isotopes during it's decay cycle, so much that Thorium reactos must have remote handling to not outright kill the operators. However, there are only a handful of Thorium reactors right now, limiting this problem a bit.

The main problem with the nuclear waste is however where to stock them. They will outlive any human made installation, can radiate ground water if stored underground unproperly and must be tightly secured as they can be used to build a dirty bomb. But it's most critical problem is that nobody wants to have a nuclear waste storage nearby, with nearby basically meaning within a 50 miles radius. All this severly limits the options on where to store them until their final decay.

Nuclear power has the least impact on nature, but when disaster stikes it makes whole regions uninhabitable for decades if not centuries or even millenia. Also, cooling water can be a problem if it gets pumped into a river or lake. While cooling water is strictly non-radioactive, it heats up the water, sometimes to the point of killing the fishes as hot water retains less gasses and thus not enough oxygen for them to breathe.



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Any properties I purchase in the future will run on solar.



Naum said:
Aren't there solarpanels these days that work even on cloudy days?.

All solar panels do, when clouds cover the sun, the solar panel doesn’t stop producing power. It just reduces the output of energy. The thicker the clouds, the less power the system will produce. Yet when the sun shines through the clouds, solar panels still get direct sunlight plus light refelected from the sun meaning, you can in some few cases it's actually possible to get more solar energy out of a cloudy day than a sunny one or at least make up for part of the reduced energy output.



There are other major reasons besides large oil/gas companies why a quick transition to wind/solar/batteries is not a good idea.
The people who can most easily and cheaply install wind/solar/batteries and get off the grid, are rural homes n farms. Not that urban homes cant have those options, its just much much harder and can be more expensive for a lot of reasons.

Imagine if in 10 years time, all of rural North America was completely off the grid. The cost of hydro would go through the roof and the people who would have to cover that cost would be the urban areas and factories.

This also could very well lead to all those rural people who are now off the grid, to easily install a geothermal and electrical/baseboard hybrid system to heat and cool their homes without needing gas/oil. This then leads to a massive spike in gas/oil costs, which also would need to be covered by urban people and factories again.

This would of course push cities and factories to try and get off the grid as well, but getting completely off, or even being able to power half their needs with renewables/batteries, could be tough do to with issues like south facing roof/yard space, trees blocking the wind and sun (yours or the neighbors), noise pollution from wind power, etc. Not to mention all of the job losses that would also follow once the rural hydro grid was torn down and gas pipelines were all shut off, capped and sealed shut.

The change to a clean renewable future is quite complex and complicated in many ways.



EricHiggin said:

There are other major reasons besides large oil/gas companies why a quick transition to wind/solar/batteries is not a good idea.
The people who can most easily and cheaply install wind/solar/batteries and get off the grid, are rural homes n farms. Not that urban homes cant have those options, its just much much harder and can be more expensive for a lot of reasons.

Imagine if in 10 years time, all of rural North America was completely off the grid. The cost of hydro would go through the roof and the people who would have to cover that cost would be the urban areas and factories.

This also could very well lead to all those rural people who are now off the grid, to easily install a geothermal and electrical/baseboard hybrid system to heat and cool their homes without needing gas/oil. This then leads to a massive spike in gas/oil costs, which also would need to be covered by urban people and factories again.

This would of course push cities and factories to try and get off the grid as well, but getting completely off, or even being able to power half their needs with renewables/batteries, could be tough do to with issues like south facing roof/yard space, trees blocking the wind and sun (yours or the neighbors), noise pollution from wind power, etc. Not to mention all of the job losses that would also follow once the rural hydro grid was torn down and gas pipelines were all shut off, capped and sealed shut.

The change to a clean renewable future is quite complex and complicated in many ways.

How would gas/oil prices spike if a part of the population stops using it?

You have the same supply at a lower demand. Basic economics says that costs should decrease it that situation.



maxleresistant said:
monocle_layton said:

Too bad the US still trying to expand the coal and oil industry. 

More money to be made with those.

Like I said, there is only two way to make sure things move, the government intervene and forces people to do it, or people can make a ton of money with it.

Definitely true. However, we'd benefit in the long if we began to make solar energy more wide spread