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    Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

    (www.newyorker.com)
    353 points dmazin | 15 comments | 09 Jul 25 12:31 UTC | HN request time: 1.394s | source | bottom
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    jillesvangurp ◴[10 Jul 25 08:46 UTC] No.44518778[source]▶
    The article doesn't mention a technology that deserves some attention because it counters the biggest and most obvious deficiency in solar: the sun doesn't always shine.

    That technology is cables. Cables allow us to move energy over long distances. And with HVCD cables that can mean across continents, oceans, time zones, and climate regions. The nice things about cables is that they are currently being underutilized. They are designed to have enough capacity so that the grid continues to function at peak demand. Off peak, there is a lot of under utilized cable capacity. An obvious use for that would be transporting power to wherever batteries need to be re-charged from wherever there is excess solar/wind power. And cables can work both ways. So import when there's a shortage, export when there's a surplus.

    And that includes the rapidly growing stock of batteries that are just sitting there with an average charge state close to more or less fully charged most of the time. We're talking terawatt hours of power. All you need to get at that is cables.

    Long distance cables will start moving non trivial amounts of renewable power around as we start executing on plans to e.g. connect Moroccan solar with the UK, Australian solar with Singapore, east coast US to Europe, etc. There are lots of cable projects stuck in planning pipelines around the world. Cables can compensate for some of the localized variations in energy productions caused by seasonal effects, weather, or day/night cycles.

    For the rest, we have nuclear, geothermal, hydro, and a rapidly growing stock of obsolete gas plants that we might still turn on on a rainy day. I think anyone still investing in gas plants will need a reality check: mothballed gas plant aren't going to be very profitable. But we'll keep some around for decades to come anyway.

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    1. buckle8017 ◴[10 Jul 25 08:54 UTC] No.44518835[source]▶
    Better grid connections helps with variable weather but it does nothing for solar biggest down side.

    Seasonal variation from December to May is enormous.

    Storing months of power is a problem with no known solution.

    replies(3): >>44519030 #>>44519689 #>>44519746 #
    2. jillesvangurp ◴[10 Jul 25 09:26 UTC] No.44519030[source]▶
    North south connections enable solar power from Africa to be used around the year. And while solar is down in the winter, wind production usually peaks. If you have thousands of km of cable, there is a lot of power that can be moved around.
    replies(2): >>44519463 #>>44519560 #
    3. HappMacDonald ◴[10 Jul 25 10:41 UTC] No.44519463[source]▶
    buckle may be referring at least partly to the north-south landmass imbalance.

    inb4 someone tries to invent floating solar farms to try to fill the Pacific with, lol.

    replies(1): >>44522634 #
    4. short_sells_poo ◴[10 Jul 25 10:55 UTC] No.44519560[source]▶
    Ah yes, what Europe needs once more is to become existentially dependent on a region that is both culturally and geographically distant and where Europe has very little ability to enforce and police it's interests.

    Have we learned nothing from the 2022 energy crisis? The number of starry eyed suggestions here about distributed worldwide power networks and load balancing is astonishing given the realities that we actually live in.

    replies(2): >>44519952 #>>44529943 #
    5. adrianN ◴[10 Jul 25 11:15 UTC] No.44519689[source]▶
    Power2Gas and using the existing infrastructure for gas storage is a known solution for storing months of power. It might not be the cheapest solution though.
    replies(2): >>44519781 #>>44528299 #
    6. davedx ◴[10 Jul 25 11:22 UTC] No.44519746[source]▶
    “No known solution” is categorically false [1]. Economics is the issue

    1. Generate hydrogen or other synthetic hydrocarbon fuels from electricity; flow batteries, saltwater batteries, and a myriad other chemistries; compressed air; hydro, etc etc

    replies(2): >>44522432 #>>44523257 #
    7. pydry ◴[10 Jul 25 11:28 UTC] No.44519781[source]▶
    Power2gas+solar/wind produced energy is a lot more expensive than natural gas and requires solar/wind to routinely overproduce.

    ...hence why there isnt much of it. It either requires subsidies or for natural gas to be taxed more.

    Windless night produced electricity from stored solar energy via windgas is still cheaper than nuclear power produced on sunny, windy days though: https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea...

    replies(1): >>44520624 #
    8. TheOtherHobbes ◴[10 Jul 25 11:52 UTC] No.44519952{3}[source]▶
    The "realities" are a direct result of a fossil economy which is still stuck in the 19th century.

    Oil and gas have caused far more wars than electricity has.

    9. bee_rider ◴[10 Jul 25 13:12 UTC] No.44520624{3}[source]▶
    Solar is always producing, at some percentage (may be very a very low percentage) of full capacity. So, we want it to routinely overproduce. That’ll also cut the days that we need to dip into storage.

    > It either requires subsidies or for natural gas to be taxed more.

    Subsidies are hard to calculate anyway. For example almost all fossil fuels get a pair of massive subsidies; we let them dump their carbon into the air for free instead of charging for it, and we build and man a bunch of aircraft carriers to go around defending the shipping lanes that it gets sent through.

    10. marcosdumay ◴[10 Jul 25 15:57 UTC] No.44522432[source]▶
    Just to add: overbuilding and using the excess in low capital-intensive applications.
    11. ZeroGravitas ◴[10 Jul 25 16:16 UTC] No.44522634{3}[source]▶
    China already has more than 1GW of floating solar PV in the Pacific.
    12. Leherenn ◴[10 Jul 25 17:20 UTC] No.44523257[source]▶
    They're not really solutions if they're not achievable in practice though. Otherwise why not add nuclear fusion to the mix?

    To give some example: Switzerland is roughly electricity neutral over a year, but there's a significant winter/summer imbalance of about 5TWh. To add enough storage to compensate this imbalance, you would need to:

    - cover about 2% of the country in batteries

    - build about a thousand pump storage stations: despite the Alps covering about 40% of the country, it's not clear if you would have enough valleys to flood

    - hydrogen looks a bit more reasonable, if we don't look at the costs, you only need to store a few millions m3 of liquid hydrogen. The gas storage in Germany for instance are quite a bit larger than that, but hydrogen is also significantly harder to store.

    And all of this is to use once a year essentially! None of it looks practical or affordable (a pump storage station costs a few billions a piece for instance).

    13. buckle8017 ◴[11 Jul 25 04:05 UTC] No.44528299[source]▶
    Methane storage is only like a few weeks at most.

    Storing months worth of power is not something we do with natural gas or even oil today.

    replies(1): >>44528999 #
    14. adrianN ◴[11 Jul 25 06:37 UTC] No.44528999{3}[source]▶
    Germany has like three months worth of nat gas reserves. See for example https://www.intellinews.com/how-many-days-of-gas-consumption.... Building bigger gas tanks is not rocket science either.
    15. seec ◴[11 Jul 25 09:09 UTC] No.44529943{3}[source]▶
    Yep pretty much stupid.

    The best interpretation you can give is that they are naive idealists, stuck in the mental state of a kid (even though their intelligence is fully developed).

    But as I'm getting older, I'm more inclined to say that they are clearly stupid, some form of "intellectual yet idiot".

    I always roll my eyes when I read that ultra optimistic report about renewables because it doesn't really match reality. Not only do they always grossly exaggerate the benefits but they also systematically bury the problems that have to be solved for it to be a long-term solution (manufacturing in a sovereign way, recycling and grid balancing are largely unsolved problems).

    And then you have idiots who come in and propose some grandiose "solution" that would require multiple countries/culture to not only collaborate economically but also accept de facto power imbalance and stuff like that. It's almost like believing in Santa; but it's cute up to a 10-year-old, after that it's more hopeless than anything else.