Energy supplier hate this, because the sun shines on every roof. They can’t sell us their product anymore.
And petro-men hate this as well, because their business model is collapsing. That’s why they are shrieking so loud.Good! Take that sellers of energy. Nobody owns the sun. Where’s your profit now?
Inb4 Sam Altman talks about Dyson Sphere-ing the sun to power his Orphan Crushing machine.
Have I gone mad with power?
No, it’s a perfectly reasonable plan to dream of stealing the Sun.
Sun in intermittent. Let our salespeople introduce you to our ASSymetric Hybrid OveralL Energy plan: for a modest monthly premium, you will be allowed to draw a quota of electricity from the grid that you can replenish by sending back your own excess of production. Of course sending back too much won’t increase your quota. If you exceeds your quota by drawing too much, a reasonabe penalty will be applied to your rate, as an incentive to moderate your production and make the world greener.
On a side note, you’ll be happy to learn our revenues have kept growing this year, and you can rely on us for years to come in our very fruitful partnership.
With love!
Solar panels have a way longer lifespan than what’s usually said (20 years is what people calculate with. But at that point they’re not broken or anything). They lose a bit of efficiency but that doesn’t really matter for already installed systems… So what this means is that this power source is here now and it will basically stay forever. Replace the odd panel here and there, but the power curve that we have massive amounts of power during mid day, pretty much regardless of where you live is here to stay. It’s a miracle really. I suspect the effects of it on the economies and society haven’t even begun to show.
The US could become a green powerhouse overnight if we just blitzed solar installations. Rural towns could become energy independent and fund their local government with solar power production, large cities could buy power from their local area and provide repair and materials recycling. In rural areas power bills could become a thing of the past. Households that use less than they produce could generate income from net metering. Farms could power their entire operation with panels above or adjacent to crops, selling excess power as well as produce.
Instead we have greedy old fucks fighting over the decaying corpse of the fossil fuel industry and trying their best to stop the world from turning. Fucking infuriating.
Just do like France and start installing over the US’ endless, endless seas of parking lots. Property owners would eventually turn profit. It saves on parking lot and car damage from sun/heat exposure. Seems like a no-brainer but no one is doing it.
There must be reasons why there aren’t at least SOME areas are doing this, since it essentially doesn’t exist. Can’t be JUST the cash layout on the panels, and US reluctance to do green energy. Is it power grid issues? Insurance problems somehow? Something else (serious replies only, no lazy “because capitalism / they are stupid / etc”)?
The upfront costs aren’t negligible, they’re the only reason I don’t have solar panels on my roof right now. It’s not just panels themselves, it’s installation and wiring and making sure it plays nice with grid power and making sure it won’t catch fire and all that. They aren’t huge costs and they’re certainly recoverable in the long run, but that doesn’t mean much if you can’t afford to get started.
Not saying that there’s no upfront cost, but in the US people buy 60k dollar cars on credit that lose half their value in the first year or two.
So I think it’s more a problem of priorities, and choosing loss of value over future profit.
You say it like that’s a common thing in the US. Maybe it’s more common here than elsewhere but it’s not typical. Most people who buy cars don’t get new cars.
The average price tag of a new car is $47,962, and the average price for used cars is $25,180.
https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/average-car-price/
Solar panel costs range from $16,600 to $20,500 for the average 6.5 kW system, but prices can vary from as little as $7,700 for smaller solar systems to upward of $34,700 for larger systems.
https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/solar/cost-of-solar-panels/
Maybe it’s time to buy a cheap car and solar panels.
Maybe, but when I got quotes for solar it was much higher cost than that, and only to replace half my electricity use
While I live on the north, they estimated based on the rated capacity of the panels, as if the amount of sun doesn’t matter
I’ve been putting something aside for deferred house projects, and I could get solar but for less than that I could do complete bathroom remodel, replace my driveway (all the way down) and maybe paint the house
What I’m saying is that a lot of people don’t have the money for new cars period, it’s not like they can just choose to forego one year and pick themselves up some solar panels. Even if they have enough to afford a used car, it’s not typical for people to have five figures of liquid capital just… around for non-necessities. Even if you can get credit for a loan, that’s another monthly note that you might not be able to afford even with the energy bill savings, if your entire paycheck is already insufficient to cover necessities. The people who can afford to burn money on new cars are very much the exception.
Up-front costs are a factor but can’t be the only one. Although I’m focused on the solar over parking lot case specifically.
Parking lots are a bit of a puzzle. This is speculation, but I suspect the slow uptake has a lot to do with the contractual relationship between the landowner and the business operator. Sometimes businesses own their own land, but I think in the US this is more an exception than the rule. These can be decades-long lease agreements that stipulate how the land can be used and what can be installed, and I bet that the installation of power infrastructure would have to be hammered out in a renegotiation with each party trying to get an advantage over the other.
I think that is incredibly likely to be another factor
The real reason you don’t see parking lot solar a lot is that it’s far more expensive than just slapping some panels up in an empty field. For parking covering, the structures supporting the panels are taller, so they need to be more robust. You also have to worry about increased maintenance. Someone is going to ram a support pillar a truck once in awhile. There are far fewer people driving through empty fields. And whether to repair damage or simply to clean the panels off, there are advantages to open fields. Instead of having your panels scattered across a hundred small parking lots, they’re all in one spot. Much easier to arrange maintenance and cleaning. Not only do you save the drive, but bigger facilities can invest in cheaper solutions like panel cleaning robots.
The parking lot structures have the advantage of not taking up any additional land. But the construction and operation costs are sufficiently magnified that just building panels in an empty field is more cost competitive. Hell, if nothing else, panels in remote farm fields are maintained by rural labor, which tends to be cheaper than labor in expensive cities.
There must be reasons why there aren’t at least SOME areas are doing this, since it essentially doesn’t exist.
They aren’t yet common but more are built all the time and they are far from non-existent.
You probably don’t realize how many of them there are. Here’s a link showing dozens of Solar Canopy projects done by just Lumos Solar. There’s dozens more companies across the United States doing these kinds of projects you just don’t hear about them. As examples did you know about the the solar canopy parking lots at Dell, Intel, Cincinnati Zoo, and Rutgers University? There’s also solar canopies in Omaha, Kansas City, Chicago, and Denver that you probably have never heard of.
Don’t feel bad for not knowing about them either; these kinds of project simply aren’t newsworthy unless they are tied to some major project or entity.
We also have massive, massive untapped pumped hydro capacity to use as storage. It’s literally just the oil lobby. Nationalize the remaining oil companies after allowing them to spin off their refineries and chemical processing plants (still useful, can also use biomass feedstock). Not rocket science, just intractable politics (because of Citizens United).
Farms could power their entire operation with panels above or adjacent to crops, selling excess power as well as produce.
they don’t do this already?
Canadian farms run 100% on solar for water pumps and sprinklers.
I am sure some do but I don’t think it’s the norm. Just judging from the people around me, I see some small solar installations and a few larger ones, but by far most places don’t have any visible panels.
I’m using second hand panels I got for free. They are 25 years old, made in Germany and they are still at +95% health. They produce 255 Kw per panel, modern panels are twice as efficient. But still, this is pretty impressive.
If we converted the land used for growing corn, specifically to be made into ethanol fuel, to house solar panels that alone would create more energy than the US is currently using. Then you can plant cash crops that need more shade, but have higher profit margins, in the same fields as the solar panels and still maintain the land’s agricultural importance
I heard about that in a technology connections video. Apparently it’s eight times the current US electricity consumption, even though those fields are mostly in the higher latitudes.
I don’t think you’re thinking this through. How would the corpos turn a profit between now and when those panels are up? You’re not thinking about the short term loss of profits. It could render and entire family vacation without champaign! Downright unamerican.
Solar panels have a way longer lifespan than what’s usually said
Refineries are not immune to storms either. At least solar panels are 99% Aluminum, glass, and silicon, which you can melt down to make more solar panels.
We’ll always have refineries though. And that’s ok. We want hydrogen, methanol, ammonia, plastics, among many other things. But we can just as easily feed them with waste biomass, farmed biomass (not corn- switchgrass or poplar or mesquite or hemp, etc). Chevron holds a patent to make gasoline from biomass and the break even price point is $12/gal. We’re not far off. And with subsidies or taxes we’d be there now (had the clean power plan survived for example).
Sure but that kind of storm incredibly rare.
And would destroy any sort of infrastructure anyways. If that’s a valid excuse we wouldn’t be building anything at all
Hurricanes, tornadoes and hail storms are rare?
See you in Florida this September!
Solar electric and heating is the ultimate because you can definetly cool down the panels and keep your well insulated house nice and warm.
In general solar electric is great because you can use it for anything, heating, cooling, battery charging, chemical processing, etc.
I’m doing my part! I have a small set on my house and it pays for almost my entire bill in the summer.
As soon as I bought my house I installed maximum solar panels and battery on it. Through all of summer I kept both my air conditioners on day and night at 23 degrees and never once imported from the grid, only used solar and battery power.
The credits I get from the power company for my excess exported power is pretty paltry, so I do what I can to use up my own solar. I bought a large food dehydrator and have started dehydrating my own hiking foods like soup, protein bars, biltong, ect and making little MRE-style hiking food packs. I have a spidergro grow light which I might use to set up a little greenhouse and grow some more delicate culinary plants some time soon too. Plus I can run a big stack of home lab servers and stuff at home without needing to consider the power cost. It’s pretty great.
biltong, ect
First off, are you South African? It’s not very humid where I live, and unless you’re living with bad humidity, I’ve discovered that peak biltong making equipment is a string and some meat hooks.
Second, etc. is short for et cetera - ECT is electroconvulsive therapy ;-)
Hey if I wanna use my solar power to run my homemade ECT machine, that’s between me and my patients!
And yeah it’s fairly humid and there are a lot of bugs and flies, so in the dehydrator at a sweaty 35 degrees is the way to go. Not Sth african though.
Fair enough, it’s your sun, so you can do what you want with it! 🌞
Same. I’m working on electrifying everything. I have geothermal HVAC, a heat pump water heater, and an EV running off the solar panels. Only the gas stove remains.
Gas stove was one of my first - when it’s time, definitely consider induction. My pots and pans really do heat up faster than gas! (And way faster than electric resistive).
It’s a good kind of strange that my stovetop itself never heats up.
Yeah same. 400W on the greenhouse. Pretty sick backup power. Would probably run the freezer with the batteries I have, as it is just runs fans, stereo, irrigation, chicken heater and water barrel heaters in the winter. But would be good enough for charging and a few other things on a pinch. Tempted to DIY for the house cause this system was so easy. Need to get an electric car to use for battery storage first though. Thinking of getting an old Nissan leaf to make into an off-road/hunting toy.
I got mine turned on October 13th, obviously not the best time for solar in the northeastern US, but for 2026 I’m 104kwh ahead, and produced nearly a megawatt in March, so I’m pretty excited to see how it goes for the summer.
Well yeah, solar is free energy.
It wasn’t a foregone conclusion until recently. Thanks to the engineers who made it incrementally more viable over the years.
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Solar is great, but will never be the only source. The same way burning carbon has never been the only source.
We need to be able to cleanly generate electrons any time, any place and solar can’t do that. Neither can wind, neither can oceans, neither can hydro. We have nuclear now, we still need fusion and geothermal ASAP.
It must be wild being the kind of person who reads about a piece of positive news like any renewable being widely adopted and then believes that it means that everyone is going all-in, 100% on it. Also hydro powers nearly all of Québec and in Ontario there are plenty of different sources of power but we still call it a “hydro bill”, not an “electricity bill”.
You’re like the people who hear about reducing cars in city downtowns and bring up rural farmers needing their trucks as if anyone is talking about that.
Whoa, leave the farmers alone! We’ll never reach 100% farmer dependence. The sun doesn’t shine at night, so plants don’t grow, because they’re sleeping. If you’re hungry at nighttime, you’ll have to harvest from a sleeping plant, and they’ll get angry at you. This is why relying 100% on farmers will result in us eating all the farmers, just like the coal miners who eat only coal, but they also drink petrol. Going all-in on any single source is a recipe for disaster, which is why we need more tractors and need to teach cows how to drive the tractors so that we can eat them, too.
This is such a chaotic response. 11/10, no notes haha
Bro has never heard of batteries, apparently.
Solars power generation almost halves during winter in any semi-northern/southern region (compared to peak in summer). If wind isn’t plentiful in those areas then you do run into a generation issue.
Solar is great, but I do suspect that there will need to be something else beyond just solar and batteries to make renewable work.
Depending on location, power usage is drastically reduced in the winter due to air conditioning not being necessary.
You’d still need some form of energy for heat during most of those months. And the most efficient heating solution (heat pumps) requires electricity
You’d still need some form of energy for heat during most of those months.
See the Drake Landing project. Worked for 17 years in freezing Canada.
Solar piping heats up salt water and stores the heat underground in sand pits all summer, heats 52 houses all winter. low tech.
Yeah, exactly. Right now people’s electricity usage drops during the winter because they use oil and gas. But my electricity usage is actually higher in the winter because we have electric heating.
I haven’t looked at wind powers efficacy, but I suspect wind and solar isn’t enough for generation in many places (or at least not economical yet). So there needs to be something else.
Not saying renewable aren’t the future, just calling out that there is still some things to figure out.
You can actually get solar power generation to be fairly consistent between summer and winter by optimizing your panels’ angle for winter months.
No, you can’t.
For an extreme example, Anchorage Alaska will see 5-6 hours of sunlight in the peak of winter vs 19-20 in the summer.
Here is a good site that breaks down the averages across each state and talks about the highs and lows - https://www.thegreenwatt.com/average-peak-sun-hours-by-state/
Why do this threads always degrade to 100% renewable solutions only? We can generate most of our power via wind and sun, the rest we can buffer, we don’t need to eliminate burning just reduce it to sporadic buffering of the grid.
And more importantly that “most of our power” that can be generated by wind and sun is far higher than what we do now. This is not a valid argument against building out renewables as fast as possible.
It may be an argument about where our endpoint is but by that time technology and circumstances will both have changed so it’s still an invalid argument
Because burning kills the climate. We need to eliminate it.
The planet can handle low levels of C02, just not the levels we are doing.
But insisting on a zero emissions solution is exactly what I would do if I were an oil and gas CEO.
Of course the planet’s systems can handle some degree of CO₂ emissions. But there are fields much harder to decarbonize than energy supply. Waste removal for example.
But insisting on a zero emissions solution is exactly what I would do if I were an oil and gas CEO.
How so?
Not if it’s closed loop or C negative with renewable sources. There’s nothing inherently bad about combustion, it’s just the scale and externalities.
Fuck that, fossil’s too expensive
Not if demand drops 90%.
Well, fingers crossed then
I read a study last fall claiming that with current technology, renewables plus batteries is the cheapest way to generate power, up over 95%! Beyond that you’d have to way overbuild to catch rare weather events so keeping a few gas peaker power plants around are cheaper.
And that was before this years announcements on sodium batteries and aluminum batteries
All the battery tech is coming out of China. USA really shit the bed on ignoring battery R&D.
Like so many things, a lot of battery R&S was done in the US but someone decided it wasn’t profitable or something so we should just drop it
If you could make a solar that works at night, this guy will say that it can’t be moved. If it can be moved, he’ll say it doesn’t fit in the pocket.
Nuclear for flat energy output and as a fallback in case of grid failure, sure, but renewables are where it’s at. “If properly harvested, there is enough solar energy cast on the earth inan hour to power all of humanity for a year”.
We have the technology right now to do this. Solutions Project, like more than a decade ago, came up with a specific model for each individual state based on their unique geography and climates, modeling a specific mix of renewables that would work for that region. More offshore wind and solar for California, more geothermal for Hawaii, more solar-thermal towers fir the desert, etc. they also broke down the economic impact this would have in each region (which is very positive). And the messed up thing is that we know this plan would have worked, because Europe has kind of been doing exactly that and we’re starting to see the real benefits emerge.
Personally I advocate for a mixed-renewables energy model, ideally with a distributed micro-grid down to the neighborhood level.
TLDR: This is a solved problem and capitalists are actively suppressing it. Click around on the Solutions Project energy map for you area. It’s pretty neat:
https://thesolutionsproject.org/what-we-do/inspiring-action/why-clean-energy/
This is great and looks quite doable …… for Massachusetts they’re projecting 55% offshore wind? While that makes sense, it’s not happening while taco Don Quixote is president. And even beyond current political chaos, trying to build offshore wind has been a decades long mess of environmental and people bottlenecks
This is great! For those who, like me, thought this map would only be for the US, it’s actually for all countries.
We don’t need nuclear. We have geothermal, hydro, solar, tidal and wind energy. Combine that with a decentralized approach, a well designed grid infrastructure and storage capacity, voilà. No need for neither fossile nor nuclear.
Nuclear isn’t an energy source that can ramp up or down with demand. In fact, it can take hours to adjust the output.
While nuclear still has a place, that particular place is flat energy input and black start sites.Do you know what fat is and what it means to the body?
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