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thelastgallon 6 hours ago [-]
Even if a location doesn't show high potential, it shouldn't matter.
Solar panels are dirt cheap, just put up more of them. With plug-in solar, rooftop solar and vertical solar, there can be enough production.
If all buildings in a city start producing, we eliminate a third of the cost of grid. Transmission network is not needed (or doesn't need to grow) we produce energy where we consume, in every city. Transmission networks are costly and time consuming. Vertical solar will get us there. Vertical solar will be the cheapest form of energy, because it can use the structural elements already on a building (no need of , adds ~4 hours of production (same as adding batteries, could be cheaper?). Vertical solar can immediately be deployed as fence, we have some kind of wall/fence between buildings everywhere.
Europe is the only place which shows a little less potential. They can build solar farms in Spain, Turkey, North Africa and add transmission lines.
Europe has very high per capita income and colonial wealth, from Roman Empire, Vikings, Portugese, Spanish Empire, English Empire, Dutch and French colonies. With that level of income and wealth, adding dirt cheap solar panels, a bit more to account for lower production should not be a big deal.
Farmers in Europe should ask for solar subsides: shade for their livestock, grow crops that grow better in shade, grow tropical crops using solar energy in greenhouses, harvest both solar and crops.
Give farmers subsidies to harvest solar instead of [ethanol|biodiesel|biofuels|biomass] (garbage ideas, some posted recently about UK subsidizing biomass, which ships wood from Canada). Millions of acres of land can be used for both solar and livestock or crops. Freeing up the land from bio-nonsense-ideas will lower the cost of food and meat.
Canada also looks okay, the only country that can't go solar is Russia. Low solar potential, but also the Govt may not be too keen on Solar.
In the long run, there will be only two fossil fuel countries: US and Russia. The two great superpowers.
bruce511 3 hours ago [-]
>> Europe is the only place which shows a little less potential. They can build solar farms in Spain, Turkey, North Africa and add transmission lines.
Traveled a lot in Europe earlier this year (by rail). Saw quite a lot of solar installed, both on buildings and in open land.
Saw even more wind turbines. Europe may have less solar potential, but clearly they still have enough sun to make solar economically viable. And the addition of wind turbines makes sense; that co-exists very well with farm land, and nicely balances solar production.
jrapdx3 2 hours ago [-]
Haven't visited Europe in a few years. Last time I was there, on a train routed through less populated areas of northern France, I saw nuclear plants emitting steam. For all their downsides they do feed a lot of power into the grid. It is a relatively clean option.
You make a strong case for alternative options. I guess the path taken pivots on evaluation of the tradeoffs, and significantly, who does the evaluating.
Lio 22 minutes ago [-]
> English Empire
You mean British Empire.
The Act of Union had at least two willing parties.
nephihaha 33 seconds ago [-]
Actually they were. The majority of the populations of Scotland and England did not want it. There was rioting in Edinburgh when it happened and the signatories had to go into a cellar to hide from it.
Under 0.01% of the Scottish population had a vote for the parliament in the first place. The Scottish politicians were bribed and there is a document showing how much each was paid (which is ridiculously hard to get hold of online, for some reason.)
dzhiurgis 4 hours ago [-]
> Even if a location doesn't show high potential, it shouldn't matter.
It all depends. In some places where install costs are high and you can get good deals on TOU (i.e. free power hours) - batteries are vastly better deal.
It's also includes historic weather patterns and has some simple modeling tools built into it that can help predict how well off grid, grid tied and hybrid solar systems will perform. So far I have found that it's predictions map very closely to what I've experienced on the ground with my solar array.
testing22321 30 minutes ago [-]
I put 7.2kw on my roof in Canada. Tight valley, tons of snow.
You know what I learned about all the projections and estimates?
It’s a complete waste of time .
Panels are so cheap now just slap up as many as will physically fit and get on with it. Everything else is a waste of time.
Over their 25+ year lifespan I’ll profit $25k-$30k.
It’s the no brainer of all time.
As soon as my garage build is done I’ll cover that roof in another 8kw of panels too.
stratts 8 hours ago [-]
I thought this was very interesting - there's the map upfront, but you can also drill into individual countries and regions with some nice tables. Some "obvious" things here, though a few surprises:
* The solar potential of a gloomy, northern locale like the UK is "only" half of somewhere sunny like Australia. Though I can imagine the swings between seasons are greater.
* Northern Canada has a surprising amount of potential, compared to European regions at the same latitude
silverFork 7 hours ago [-]
Canada compared to Mongolia of similar latitude, has lower potential though. Apparently that is because Mongolia is a desert and has no forests, very dry and high in elevation. The cold is no issue. The panels there produce 1.8 times more. The reason that Northern Europe is worse than Canada of the same latitude is apparently because of maritime proximity that increases humidity that diffuses light. Australia doesn't have maritime climate.
pfdietz 7 hours ago [-]
Cold actually increases PV output.
thelastgallon 6 hours ago [-]
I wonder if the map accounts for this,
silverFork 5 hours ago [-]
Without accounting for it, the maps wouldn't look like that. Cold, dry and high altitude increase the performance of solar.
pfdietz 4 hours ago [-]
Dry and high altitude increase the performance because those increase the amount of sunlight hitting the ground. The effect of temperature would be on top of those effects.
thelastgallon 6 hours ago [-]
Places with most potential:
Australia (all of it!)
Most of South America: Chile (darkest on the map!), Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil.
Mexico and Cuba (everywhere), all of Central America
Western US
Africa (everywhere)
Middle East (everywhere)
Mongolia, North and Western China, Tibet
silverFork 5 hours ago [-]
Europe has one of highest wind energy potentials instead. They can harvest wind energy in the winter when they need it most.
And Europe has historical expertise and European companies that they can subsidize.
silverFork 3 hours ago [-]
Nice wind energy map there. Surprised that some places are good for both wind and solar. There is also Geothermal.. valleys have higher potential for geothermal
Europe geothermal. There are probably better maps than this:
These kinds of maps are very misleading. They show averages, and the averages rarely drive the costs - somebody in this thread already noted that Australia is only 2x better than the UK.
The main killer of solar is variability. Northern countries have shorter solar days during winter and can have _weeks_ of overcast days, so these countries would need some kind of backup: either long-term storage, or nuclear.
Tade0 7 minutes ago [-]
Nah, just overprovision like crazy and store what you can.
Germany has currently around 1.5kW of solar installed per person - even in October this yields double-digit GWs at 9am. They can't put all that power to use in summer, but it sure puts a damper on prices off season.
Sure, storage is still being built as there's a market for it, but for now it's still cheaper to just build more solar capacity.
dzhiurgis 4 hours ago [-]
I used them while designing my system. Just checked the numbers again against last 365 days - 97.5% accurate. Previous check I did year ago - I think it was more like 99.9% accurate.
Solar panels are dirt cheap, just put up more of them. With plug-in solar, rooftop solar and vertical solar, there can be enough production.
If all buildings in a city start producing, we eliminate a third of the cost of grid. Transmission network is not needed (or doesn't need to grow) we produce energy where we consume, in every city. Transmission networks are costly and time consuming. Vertical solar will get us there. Vertical solar will be the cheapest form of energy, because it can use the structural elements already on a building (no need of , adds ~4 hours of production (same as adding batteries, could be cheaper?). Vertical solar can immediately be deployed as fence, we have some kind of wall/fence between buildings everywhere.
Europe is the only place which shows a little less potential. They can build solar farms in Spain, Turkey, North Africa and add transmission lines.
Europe has very high per capita income and colonial wealth, from Roman Empire, Vikings, Portugese, Spanish Empire, English Empire, Dutch and French colonies. With that level of income and wealth, adding dirt cheap solar panels, a bit more to account for lower production should not be a big deal.
Farmers in Europe should ask for solar subsides: shade for their livestock, grow crops that grow better in shade, grow tropical crops using solar energy in greenhouses, harvest both solar and crops.
Give farmers subsidies to harvest solar instead of [ethanol|biodiesel|biofuels|biomass] (garbage ideas, some posted recently about UK subsidizing biomass, which ships wood from Canada). Millions of acres of land can be used for both solar and livestock or crops. Freeing up the land from bio-nonsense-ideas will lower the cost of food and meat.
Canada also looks okay, the only country that can't go solar is Russia. Low solar potential, but also the Govt may not be too keen on Solar.
In the long run, there will be only two fossil fuel countries: US and Russia. The two great superpowers.
Traveled a lot in Europe earlier this year (by rail). Saw quite a lot of solar installed, both on buildings and in open land.
Saw even more wind turbines. Europe may have less solar potential, but clearly they still have enough sun to make solar economically viable. And the addition of wind turbines makes sense; that co-exists very well with farm land, and nicely balances solar production.
You make a strong case for alternative options. I guess the path taken pivots on evaluation of the tradeoffs, and significantly, who does the evaluating.
You mean British Empire.
The Act of Union had at least two willing parties.
Under 0.01% of the Scottish population had a vote for the parliament in the first place. The Scottish politicians were bribed and there is a document showing how much each was paid (which is ridiculously hard to get hold of online, for some reason.)
It all depends. In some places where install costs are high and you can get good deals on TOU (i.e. free power hours) - batteries are vastly better deal.
It's also includes historic weather patterns and has some simple modeling tools built into it that can help predict how well off grid, grid tied and hybrid solar systems will perform. So far I have found that it's predictions map very closely to what I've experienced on the ground with my solar array.
You know what I learned about all the projections and estimates?
It’s a complete waste of time . Panels are so cheap now just slap up as many as will physically fit and get on with it. Everything else is a waste of time.
Over their 25+ year lifespan I’ll profit $25k-$30k.
It’s the no brainer of all time.
As soon as my garage build is done I’ll cover that roof in another 8kw of panels too.
* The solar potential of a gloomy, northern locale like the UK is "only" half of somewhere sunny like Australia. Though I can imagine the swings between seasons are greater.
* Northern Canada has a surprising amount of potential, compared to European regions at the same latitude
Australia (all of it!)
Most of South America: Chile (darkest on the map!), Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil.
Mexico and Cuba (everywhere), all of Central America
Western US
Africa (everywhere) Middle East (everywhere) Mongolia, North and Western China, Tibet
And Europe has historical expertise and European companies that they can subsidize.
Europe geothermal. There are probably better maps than this:
https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/project-innerspace-completes-...
The main killer of solar is variability. Northern countries have shorter solar days during winter and can have _weeks_ of overcast days, so these countries would need some kind of backup: either long-term storage, or nuclear.
Germany has currently around 1.5kW of solar installed per person - even in October this yields double-digit GWs at 9am. They can't put all that power to use in summer, but it sure puts a damper on prices off season.
Sure, storage is still being built as there's a market for it, but for now it's still cheaper to just build more solar capacity.