Full renewable power is unworkable

[Anonymous No.10894542]

Wind power falls off sharply seasonally-often by half or more. You'd need a massive farm to make up for that in the off-season.

Solar's issues are worse since it's essentially useless more than half the time for making power-to use only solar for a region's electricity you'd need power storage,which at the scale you'd need for even a moderately sized city, is fucking insane.
If i'm wrong I want to know it-can we go 100% renewables? How do we handle power storage realistically?

[Anonymous No.10894556]

There's a shit ton of published work on the subject why don't you read it?

[Anonymous No.10894561]

>>10894542
the only places where solar would actually be a 100% efficient energy source is on venus and mercury.
in venus you could use the constant flow of wind at +200km and solar energy in a floating swarm of floating houses.

[Anonymous No.10894570]

Solar collectors in space are definitely the way to go in my opinion. The energy can be transmitted to Earth via lasers

[Anonymous No.10894579]

>>10894570
I propose a dyson swarm.
we use mercury as the planet who will supply the material needed.

[Anonymous No.10894583]

>>10894556
Not OP but if you could lead me into the direction of relevant articles I'll appreciate it brother

[Anonymous No.10894596]

Nuclear power has the potential to be really good if we let the new gen reactors get built and economies of scale kick in. That gets rid of having to deal with unreliable power.

[Anonymous No.10894598]

>>10894596
Still a finite resource

[Anonymous No.10894633]

>>10894598
Not meaningfully-wecan harvest uranium from ocean water using plastic ropes. We would probably all die out from solar expansion before using all of that up.

[Anonymous No.10894642]

>>10894598
Everything is a finite resource at some point. Between uranium and thorium there's enough fuel to last until we colonize other planets, probably other stars even.

[Anonymous No.10894644]

>>10894642
>>10894633
From the Sun alone there's enough energy to fulfill all our needs up until the point it engulfs the Earth

[Anonymous No.10894650]

>>10894644
but only when it's the day, and only during the day when it's not cloudy. Getting a big chink of your power in california is easy-but it's a lot harder in Seattle.

[Anonymous No.10894658]

>>10894650
I'm not talking about Earth based solar panels

[Anonymous No.10894671]

>>10894650
There's some power distribution map that makes this a non-issue.

Either that, or the degree to which we'll need to cut back as a civilization is to actually start respecting the day/night cycle again.

[Anonymous No.10894691]

>>10894561
Solar panels are never 100% efficient.

[Anonymous No.10894696]

>>10894658
If you're talking about technology that doesn't even exist yet, fusion power is a far better option. Solar panels in outer space would have much shorter lifespan because of damage from cosmic rays and micrometeorites.

[Anonymous No.10894858]

>>10894696
>If you're talking about technology that doesn't even exist yet
>fusion power is a far better option
lol what?

[Anonymous No.10894865]

>>10894598
no it isn't.

[Anonymous No.10894869]

>>10894696
We have tesla towers, while we don't have fusion reactors.

[Anonymous No.10894892]

25% base load nuclear, the rest renewables. This is possible.

[Anonymous No.10894893]

>>10894671
Cool bro we will just stop consuming electricity at night rather than build some fucking nuclear plants.

[Anonymous No.10894898]

>>10894644

With breeder reactors, there is enough uranium and thorium to last us until after the sun burns out. Advanced nuclear is thus even more sustainable than renewables.

[Anonymous No.10894960]

>>10894542
>How do we handle power storage realistically?
Those solarthermic plants in your picture simply store heat for 24/7 energy production. These are build in sunny southern regions with almost no seasons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlZMhoDjrSU

[Anonymous No.10894982]

>>10894865
fissile elements are finite

[Anonymous No.10895130]

>>10894858
Not him but fusion is a lot more realistic than space based solar with current tech.

[Anonymous No.10895166]

Just let energy fall and have everyone live in a renaissance like technology era. We have antibiotics, toothpaste, soaps ans hand sanitizers which are the most important parts, the rest just comes down to weak faggots angry about needing to be physical in their labor.

[Anonymous No.10895901]

>>10894691
on earth that is true, but on mercury I bet with enough time you can actually create a devise that works 100% on solar and can use that 100% of energy.
that planet is rich in metals and have plenty of material to build.
its sad to know that we can only use solar at 100% efficiency in only that planet and 85% at best on venus.
on earth...solar is unreliable.
its makes me sad to accept it.

[Imnot Arobot No.10896454]

>>10894542
>If i'm wrong I want to know it
You're not wrong about wind and solar producing energy less than half the time,
but the part about storage being "fucking insane" is just tripe.

[Anonymous No.10896495]

>>10896454

Except it is an issue.

Batteries are inefficient and that is assuming we have enough resources to actually build enough of them to store the energy required.

[Anonymous No.10896507]

>>10896495
>Batteries are inefficient
Lrn2battery
>The battery is highly efficient.
https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/comparing_the_battery_with_other_power_sources

[Anonymous No.10896512]

>>10895901
You cannot have a one hundred percent efficient system due to thermodynamics and physics in general, the most efficient energy can get is after the stars die out and background radiation dissipates in billions of years. Heat is a limiter on energy efficiency as well as several other things

[Anonymous No.10896573]

>>10894542
I don't particularly care about the grid or the entire country, but for personal use, an array of solar panels can easily sustain a family.

The 300 watt panels from CanadianSolar sells for $192. Rough dimensions is 18(5'5 ft x 3'4 ft) sqft per panel. 10 of those will cost $2000 and 3KW of power on full afternoon sun.

However due to inefficiencies/clouds/etc, most of the 10 hour time, you'll get 1/2 of that power. So 1.5kw. What can you run on that? Fridge(~400w, yes I know, that's while its active, I know most of the time it will use less than that on idle), small microwave 1000watt on burst, laptops/smartphones/small electrics, bunch of LED light for homes, on-demand heated water, etc.

However the idea setup is with a battery pack, so those burst restrictions won't be too much of an issue.

[Anonymous No.10896578]

I have an easy solution. Kill 6 billion people then enact 2 child policy. There now power demands are low enough to be met. Nobel Peace Prize please.

[Anonymous No.10896681]

>>10896578
>Kill 6 billion people
>easy
O RLY

[Anonymous No.10896726]

>>10894598
We have many different designs and material beyond PWRs and uranium. Hell, some of the nuclear reactor designs we have are so efficient that our sun would die out before we ran out of material to feed our reactors.

Plus, nuclear is also our only bet as a reliable source of energy for interplanetary colonization and/or exploration as solar performance has an exponential dropoff with respect to distance from the sun. And solar cells, unless fully organic and biodegradable, will be finite given that they are produced using materials from the earth.

[Anonymous No.10896784]

>>10894542 It is possible. See >>72363255
In short: reduce consumption, improved energy storage/batteries, smart grid, smart consumer devices, smart consumer.

[Anonymous No.10896786]

>>10896681
Once fossil fuels run out it'll happen without effort.

[Anonymous No.10897041]

>>10894542
Space based solar would work but it has extremely expensive startup costs.

[Anonymous No.10897296]

>>10896681
lol, we could kill 7.53 billion tonight
>>10896786 is correct, it is either prune the branches now or the tree dies. but guess which one is more profitable for the capitalist class

[Anonymous No.10897439]

>>10896512
oh...then what should we do?
the only way I see it possible to use solar as a efficient source of energy is through a dyson swarm structure.

[Anonymous No.10897468]

>>10897439
Making it as efficient as possible is do-able, just like coal, nuclear and other methods. There is energy loss from converting solar/coal/wind/etc to electric and more energy loss from transporting it. The loss of energy from transportation is the biggest limiter, it's the reason we don't just cover deserts in wind and solar farms, the energy can't reach civilization in reasonable amounts

[Anonymous No.10897485]

>>10897468
I see...even if we master those source pf energies, we can't really use them in a meaningful way unlike nuclear energy.

[Anonymous No.10897787]

>>10897485
Damn right bro!
#NutForNuclear

[Anonymous No.10897799]

>>10895130
How did you got internet in the 1960s? We do space based solar for decades. Works like a charm.

[Anonymous No.10897804]

>>10894691
>Solar panels are never 100% efficient.
true, nothing ever is 100% efficient, current commercial panels are at 20%, cells in labs are at 40%
but the important part is price, not theoretical efficiency

[Anonymous No.10897807]

>>10894570
When I hear these projects talking about beaming solar energy back to earth as lasers or microwaves or some shit, how does that work exactly? Do you just have the laser heat up water on the planetary surface to spin some turbines? Or is there some other mechanism involved? Because this seems like a highly inefficient method of producing energy.

[Anonymous No.10897814]

>>10897807
I'm quite certain humans will achieve this somehow in the future.
Efficiency isn't important when you have the Sun as a power source

[Anonymous No.10897884]

>>10896507

27% charge loss after 2 years.

That's shit. By your own source.

Battery technology would require swap out every 8 years. There is not enough material to do that to supply the grid.

Nuclear is the only feasible solution.

[Anonymous No.10897935]

>>10894570
>>10897807

These are the same people who tell us that massive-scale fission grids are unrealistic

[Anonymous No.10898109]

>>10897799
I mean space based solar that transfers the energy to the ground.

[Anonymous No.10898114]

>>10894542
First of all, we don't need to go fully renewable. Yes, stream-based renewables such as sun/wind are not manageable everywhere. Combining other renewable alternatives such as biomass and having a base load of nuclear or fossil fuel seems like the best solution.

[Anonymous No.10898157]

>>10894570
>The energy can be transmitted to Earth via lasers

Lasers, you say?

[Anonymous No.10898187]

>>10894598
so is the sun

[Anonymous No.10898295]

>>10897807
Lasers are absorbed with photovoltaic cells. Microwaves use antenna technology; model helicopters have been built that use beamed microwaves to power themselves.
The efficiency comes in from having the solar power working at high intensity nearly 24/7. The satellite is being hit with 150% the peak earth surface solar intensity for all but an hour a day (it depends on orbit) and you get to choose what form that energy takes when it is beamed through the atmosphere to avoid as much energy loss as possible. Normal solar farms only make power 30% of the time and most of that is non-peak intensity.
Constant power means fewer batteries which are the main hurdle for solar power. You could build enough nuke plants to power the whole US for a fraction of the cost of only the batteries needed to power the US using solar or solar/wind.

[Anonymous No.10898300]

>>10894633
Never confuse an early prototype hyped to the max with reliable industrialised process.

[Anonymous No.10898313]

>>10897807
A wide dispersion microwave beam could be picked up by antennas on the ground; obviously if the beam is too focused it'll fry anything that wanders into the collection area, so you'd probably want a couple of acres of antennae depending on the power output.

[Anonymous No.10898491]

>>10894542
>Wind power falls off sharply seasonally-often by half or more. You'd need a massive farm to make up for that in the off-season.

So you are saying we only need to run natural gas plants half the year? So we can go to 50% renewable without any issues. Fucking great!

[Anonymous No.10898511]

>>10894960
These plants have crazy low actual power production though. The newest one in spain does work 24/7 but it only produces like 1.5MW of electricity iirc, for an area you could build like 2000 times that capacity in nuclear reactors instead.

[Anonymous No.10898534]

>>10894696
keep the solar arrays self-flying only above the clouds but below orbit. protection from cosmic rays in exchange for less energy

[Anonymous No.10898541]

>>10896573
this fag does not understand "muh average family" electricity consumption is a fucking rounding error

[Anonymous No.10898548]

>>10898295
The problem with your idea, the "transfer energy to ground" is a space-based weapon of mass destruction.

[Anonymous No.10898565]

>>10894579
I've heard about this idea before, I can't help but think would there be any issues operating on a planet so close to the sun that also has no atmosphere?

[Anonymous No.10898586]

>>10898511
You can't actually though because nuclear has such specific site requirements

[Anonymous No.10898645]

>>10898565
of there will be problems but I am sure we will overcome them.
the craters on the poles are a perfect place to cool down, also a day in mercury last around 1408 hours and since it is small then you could actually build a cannon to launch stuff into space.
you can reach escape velocity on mercury through a damn rail gun, you won't shit to launch material into space.
also we can use exponential growth to our advantages and actually create a dyson swarm around the sun within merely 20 years.
since the planet don't have atmosphere we can safely redirect sun beams and create solar plants that are more efficient than anything we build on earth to receive those beams in order to power machines to build more.

[Anonymous No.10898668]

>>10894542

I am concerned about your ability to think, op.

If renewables are by definition renewable, and other forms of power are by definition not renewable, shouldn't the question be about the feasibility of non-renewables?

Isn't the question really about management? I mean, you have to depend on others for your non-renewable power, and for the things that run off that power, shouldn't the question be about the stupid economic system that curates and exploits that dependence, and not about questioning those who are trying to stop that?

I think maybe you are a shill and a bot and don't know it.....

[Anonymous No.10899448]

>>10898313
Yes, but how do I convert that microwave to electricity?

[Anonymous No.10899476]

>>10899448
Rectenna

[Anonymous No.10899491]

>>10894583
google scholar

[Anonymous No.10899497]

>>10894893
tell me whats wrong w nuclear plants

[Anonymous No.10899534]

>>10894583
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2015/EE/C5EE01283J#!divAbstract

[Anonymous No.10899942]

>>10899497
I think the anon supports nuclear plants, he's just pointing out that the other guy is suggesting we cut back electricity use to the extent humans "respect night/day cycles again". So he's ironically saying to not use electricity because the other guy doesn't want to just go with nuclear instead.

If I'm wrong then I have no idea.

[Anonymous No.10899947]

>>10894542

Figure out a way to store the energy or you just make each household run on its own power system and not utilise the grid.

[Anonymous No.10899951]

>>10899947
>you just make each household run on its own power system and not utilise the grid.
What government wouldn't do everything in their power to prevent that? What's next, people growing food in their yards and learning how to tie their shoes? The cattle must be controlled and kept dependent on the gubbermint.

[Anonymous No.10899994]

with current solar tech, we could power most of the world's energy demand with an area about the size of the sahara. Quite a lot of land, but spread out over the entire world it's attainable, and that's just using current tech. The main issue with solar is energy storage, not whether we can place enough solar panels to generate electricity. There's also more than 1 type of solar energy, solar facilities that focus light are pretty great at electricity generation.

[Anonymous No.10900068]

>>10894542
>>10894542
These fucking paid shills are spamming this board with antirenewables propaganda and profission propaganda.
Fuck off nigger, kill yourself.

For those who care about facts:
You only need a tiny surface to provide enough energy for the entire planet. Concerns raised by concern trolls like OP are already taken into account.

[Anonymous No.10900075]

>>10899951
The US government was offering subsidies for people to do exactly that

[Anonymous No.10900079]

>>10894542
i actually support solar power because:
more solar -> more power during summer -> virtually free a/c

[Anonymous No.10900442]

>>10894542
the uk was showing off about increased renewable power last week, which were quickly followed by mass blackouts.

[Anonymous No.10900715]

>>10900442
The reason for this regional blackout in UK was a failing fossil fuel plant and grid mismanagement.

[Anonymous No.10901241]

>>10897884
>27% charge loss after 2 years
...in a Nissan Leaf. Nobody (except perhaps you) would consider using EV car batteries at a wind or solar farm.
What you wrote about storage being "fucking insane" is still just tripe.

[Anonymous No.10901289]

>>10898668
OP is definitely a shill. Every goddamn day someone is posting a pro fission thread or concern trolling about renewables.
And some faggot mod(s) are deleting messages of people who call out people like OP it's actually insane.

[Anonymous No.10901822]

>>10901289
should we ignore any time this type of bullshit begins.
also we should create a nuclear thread, I bet the radiation will fend off faggotry.

[Anonymous No.10901970]

>>10901241


Then please feel free to post the single digit number of years that the entire expensive battery system we literally couldn't build with materials on earth needs replacing.

[Anonymous No.10901972]

>>10900715

Due to increased reliance on them to make up for the pitfalls of all that wind and solar they invested in instead of nuclear.

[Anonymous No.10902052]

>>10895166
> We have antibiotics, toothpaste, soaps ans hand sanitizers which are the most important parts
Oh yeah? How do you think these things are produced in large enough quantities so that they can be enjoyed by everyone and not just the ultra rich? What about vaccines? Or you know those illnesses that aren't bacterial or viral i.e most of them.

[Anonymous No.10902061]

>>10896507
Storing all that power with batteries is exorbitantly expansive.
Not only that, the amount of power required to make batteries/solar panels compared to what they can output or store is very high, and they're usually not manufactured using either. Expect their costs to explode as soon as everyone tries to adopt such a grid.
Pumped storage is the least insane idea but that's not feasible everywhere.

[Anonymous No.10902083]

>>10894542
Nothing is fully "renewable", not even the so-called renewable energy is totally independent of finite resources. Thus, since the consumption of natural resources is directly link to human activity, if we want to rationally maintain the population and economic growth, it is extremely important to extend the lifetime of every resource available. The goal is not to reach 100% renewable, because this is not feasable.
About power storage, in my view, there are some interesting studies in 'power-to-gas' technology. The efficiency is much lower than batteries and the ideia sounds ridiculous, but the systems can run very well with the gas infractructure.

[Anonymous No.10902088]

>>10902083
>Nothing is fully "renewable", not even the so-called renewable energy is totally independent of finite resources.

Not what anyone means by “renewable”. The death of the Sun in billions of years is beyond human timescales.

[Anonymous No.10902091]

>>10894542
>Full renewable power is unworkable

Prove it. Wind power, solar power, and hydro power can be transferred vast distances with modern cables with little efficiency loss.

[Anonymous No.10902144]

>>10898511
Don't nuclear reactors guzzle water like crazy?

[Anonymous No.10902263]

>>10902144
Can't you use seawater?

[Anonymous No.10902725]

>>10898511
Maybe we could build floating platforms.

[Anonymous No.10902775]

>>10902263
>use highly corrosive salt water for critical purposes