900 tanks of (electrons)

I just read that in the last quarter the US installed something like 2.6 GW of PV solar capacity. The residential market alone saw 712 MW installed. Clearly no one can continue to argue that PV solar has an economic issue. As you say, the prices continue to drop so that it makes literally no sens e to build anything that does not have similar economics.

Musk, in his ever extreme manner, talked about a single 6 trillion dollar s olar farm in the US south west that could supply electricity for the entire country. Obviously that is not practical for several reasons, but the eco nomics of the PV farm is not one of them.

Wide spread adoption of solar PV generation of electricity is not a questio n of "if", it is only a questions of "when", better put, how soon.

While this may apply to the panels themselves, but not so much to installation costs or the price of land.

It is stupid trying to reach 100 % penetration with a single unreliable energy source. At least use several more or less independent unreliable sources such as wind and wave in addition to solar to reduce the risk for simultaneous deficiencies.

It is also questionable does it make sense to use huge batteries to ride through these deficiencies. Why not use gas turbines that might be needed 100-1000 hours each year ? Does suggesting this cause heart attacks to climate alarmists ?

On Friday, December 13, 2019 at 9:40:08 PM UTC+11, snipped-for-privacy@downunder.com w rote:

.6 GW of PV solar capacity. The residential market alone saw 712 MW instal led. Clearly no one can continue to argue that PV solar has an economic is sue. As you say, the prices continue to drop so that it makes literally no sense to build anything that does not have similar economics.

lar solar farm in the US south west that could supply electricity for the e ntire country. Obviously that is not practical for several reasons, but th e economics of the PV farm is not one of them.

estion of "if", it is only a questions of "when", better put, how soon.

it is going up by 30% a year.

ves the unit price - should speed up the process again sometime soon.

At the moment the panels seem to be the most expensive bit, and they don't demand much is terms of installation (unlike windmills).

There's a great deal of land in Australia which isn't much good for anythin g but installing solar panels. Finland isn't as promising.

d and battery storage required to let this happen has barely begun, but it is starting to happen.

There's nothing all that unreliable about solar power, particularly if you' ve got dry inland places to put them. It's intermittent, but the sun does c ome up every morning.

Sure. I wasn't proposing that we went for 100% solar - just pointing out wh en we would get there if the current trend was sustained.

I've posted about this earlier - an MIT study said that batteries would hav e to get cheaper by a factor of five or so to do the whole job, but even a current prices they could cover about 95% of the demand, and while infreque nt use of fast-start gas-turbine back up would still emit some CO2 a twenty

-fold reduction in emissions would be well worth having.

There are places where CO2 emissions are harder to eliminate. Current think ing seems to be that we'll probably end up needing to take some out of the atmosphere for a while at least.

Crushing lots of olivine and spreading it on beaches has been touted as a c heap way of doing that, but I've not heard that line pushed recently.

There are climate alarmists around, but anybody who has a reasonable grasp of the science can't be happy about the current situation.

Sydney has been blanketed in bush-fire smoke for the past couple of weeks, and hospital admissions for people with respiratory problems are way up.

This is unprecedented, and anybody who doesn't find it alarming isn't payin g attention.

The proximal cause the way the Indian Ocean Dipole is working at the moment

and the current behaviour does seem to be driven by climate change.

On Friday, December 13, 2019 at 5:40:08 AM UTC-5, snipped-for-privacy@downunder.com wr ote:

Did you just jump into the conversation? Or maybe you are just reacting to every partial sentence without considering the conversation.

No one is seriously suggesting PV solar should be the only source of energy for the US. Elon Musk said it could be done and it could. No one is sayi ng it is practical. Musk is talking about it because he likes to draw atte ntion to ideas by exaggeration.

The rest of us realize that PV solar will become a dominant mover in the en ergy market because of the cost. Other energy sources are not just dirty o r difficult, but more expensive and will become moreso as costs in PV solar and wind continue to drop.

If you can't acknowledge that simple, basic concept, there is no point in c ontinuing to discuss this topic.

I'm fine with using the gas turbines we already have for a while. But the ultimate goal is to cut carbon emissions as much as possible. There are so me ways that we release CO2 into the atmosphere that we don't have a means of eliminating right now, for example the manufacturing of Portland cement. I believe the total carbon released is around 8% of the total carbon prob lem. If we eliminate the part of that which comes from the energy used, we are still left with about half that which currently can not be eliminated. So we need to reduce the energy related carbon emissions as much as we ca n since we can't cut carbon emissions completely.

But why are you so opposed to alternative methods? Presently we have lots of room for PV solar to replace carbon releasing energy sources in most are as of the world. In general we don't even need to consider the impact of i ntermittency on the energy supply. Why fight something that isn't even an issue yet?

It can. One doesn't require a 5.5-year payback to make an investment. But incentives help to speed up the process. W/o incentives my payback time would have been about 15 years, which is not bad. My $34k system would probably cost about $25k now, or much less if I looked for a cheaper installer. One of my neighbors installed his roof five years ago with some help from friends and paid under $10k. He suggested I do the same, and gave me his recipe, but I was too busy.

Including insurance. A hail storm is going to be an expensive proposition for the insurance companies.

Including the above insurance AND time-valued money.

Apparently not so much, according to multiple YouTube videos. BTW, solar company said it's OK to walk on the roof-mounted solar panels, although they suggest walking near the seams.

Have you seen what hail does to a car? You might just as well shoot it a thousand times with a 30-06. Good grief!

I can dent a car with my knuckle, by hitting the middle of large, flat panels like hood and roof---but I would probably hurt myself trying to break the glass on a solar panel. I am sure that there are hailstorms that would take out most panels, but I expect that on average, hail does more damage to cars than to panels.

Idiot. Hail does a lot more than make a few dents in a car. A good hail storm will completely destroy cars. It'll take out any solar panels on roofs, as well.

That is true. Good thing they are incredibly rare in most areas.

Someone mentioned the additional cost of insurance for solar panels. I'm looking into that with my agent. I want to find out if there is a difference in coverage if the panels are not mounted on the home or a detached garage.

None of the YouTube videos I could find validated this view. One included a half-hour-long storm with hundreds of quarter- sized hailstones bouncing off the panels and littering the ground. Another featured an impressive hail-stone gun, firing at various solar panels, with large hailstones, at industry- standard maximum velocities. The hailstones made spectacular patterns on the panels as they shattered, but the panels were unscathed. It was only after they substituted steel balls, and increased the velocity, that they got panel damage. Even then, it's not clear the damage put the panel out of business. While I'm suspect it's possible to get occasional hail-storm damage, I doubt it's a big issue for most solar-roof owners.

You appear to be refuting me but it sounds like you are refuting KRW.

Even quarter sized hail is not so damaging. That might start to ping cars, but I think it needs to be larger to do any real damage.

Notice in the examples of car damage it is almost always the metal that suffers, not the windows.

Are you really one of AlwaysWrong's sock puppets? I've seen cars after hail storms. There's nothing left. 2" holes in the sheet metal, no windows. Nothing.

that's just because the metal is softer if the hail is big enough it'll damage the windows.

the reports of broken windows typically come with reports of golf-ball sized hail (42mm) The quarter sized hail (24mm) has only 1/6 the mass and a lower speed too.

Yes, and I'm sure that happens every other day. lol If it was as bad as you talk, no one would even have homes much less solar panels.

Please stop with the nonsense. It is so tiring when we are trying to have a rational conversation.

I never said it can't happen. The point is this is a rare occurrence and is very, very unlikely to happen in any given location.

Heck, tornadoes happen too, but again, in any given location they are very rare.

I'd worry more about the tornadoes. They seem like a bigger problem.

Idiot. Hail storms wipe out roofs an windows all the time. They're a whole lot cheaper to replace than solar panels. Insurance companies are careful not to over-insure in one are because the losses can be massive.

You're so full of shit it's leaking out your ears, AlwaysWrong.

Idiot. It doesn't have to happen in "any given location". It just has to happen and the insurance companies take the hammer. They're not going just ignore those costs.

Good grief you're a moron. There were a whole bunch of them across Louisiana, Alabama, and South Georgia last night alone.

You really are one stupid lefty. (Well, they all are)