Lessons Learned From Google's Green Energy Bust 222
the_newsbeagle writes In 2007, Google boldly declared a new initiative to invent a green energy technology that produced cheaper electricity than coal-fired power plants. Sure, energy researchers had been hammering at this task for decades, but Google hoped to figure it out in a few years. They didn't. Instead, Google admitted defeat and shut down the project in 2011. In a admirable twist, however, two of the project's engineers then dedicated themselves to learning from the project's failure. What did it mean that one of the world's most ambitious and capable innovation companies couldn't invent a cheap renewable energy tech?
Bad sign. (Score:5, Interesting)
And when gratification is not instant, they move on.
I also see this, on a smaller but more insidious scale, in the almost pathological desire to not learn from the past developers have been fetishizing. Too often learning roots or old technologies 'taints' a person with 'old' ideas rather than teaching them lessons others have already learned so that they can move on from there. So many 'new' technologies that when the developers are asked 'ok, this is great, but how do you plan to address the issues that were encountered last time?' they just look at you blankly and claim this is new and innovative, or that you just don't understand.
Ok, got a bit off topic there ^_^
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I see your point the problem imho is the assumption that solar and wind can be made cheap and reliable. The one cheap, reliable, renewable energy source has been working well for centuries which is hydro.
Wind and solar have a future but they will be supplements to other energy systems and not the main source.
Well unless we have super leaps battery/storage and possibly room temperature superconductors.
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Or highly efficient solar cells...they still wouldn't generate power at night, but they'd be too cheap and clean to not use to the fullest.
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And the fullest will be to supplement other power sources.
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It's all a problem of advertising hype.
Old isn't "old".
It's tried.
Field-tested.
Verified.
Proven.
Established.
De-facto.
Standardised.
Whenever someone says they want to throw out the "old", especially in computing terms (e.g. init systems, *cough*), I mentally substitute those words. And when I'm not immediately keen to jump on board, I get mocked.
Until the project flops, that is, or the reinvention of the wheel, or the having to sacrifice functionality, or the realisation that two systems are needed, or whatev
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I don't think it's really off topic. When I read, "What did it mean that one of the world's most ambitious and capable innovation companies couldn't invent a cheap renewable energy tech?" my first thought was, "It probably means that inventing cheap renewable energy is difficult, if not beyond our current technology, if not impossible. What, did these Google engineers really believe that the only reason it hasn't been done yet is that everyone else is stupid?"
There's definitely something a bit silly abou
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while somehow failing to recognize that the results of those methods are products that are often not unstable
It should be either "products that are unstable" or "products that are not stable". My point there is, you can make lots of iterative improvements on Google Plus because it's software that can be changed after deployment, and if you screw it up and have a small disaster, who cares? People are briefly without their social network while you fix the problem or restore from a backup, or whatever. A lot of things aren't like that. Not all software engineering concepts are universally applicable.
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I think this speaks a lot about how companies and the population are increasingly thinking in rather short terms and how little respect the modern tech elite have for those who came before them. There seems to be this attitude that difficult problems are only unsolved because the 'wrong' people have looked at it and flush with arrogance for solving comparatively simple internet related ones they believe that they are smarter and thus will quickly tackle what those 'researchers' and 'old fogies' could not.
I don't think that accurately reflects the attitude, although it might sometimes seem that way. There is nothing wrong with thinking that coming at old problems from a new direction, with fresh ideas, and bringing the latest science and technology to bear on the problems, might throw up new solutions. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Having respect for "those who came before" doesn't mean assuming that problems can't be solved just because they haven't been solved already.
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In this instance the problem has been solved, as solar will soon be cheaper than coal and is already cheaper than nuclear. They picked the wrong project really, they should have been looking at ways to make the grid take better advantage of cheap and clean energy sources.
Google has hundreds of projects on the go all the time. Some come good, some don't. You have to try to know that it can't be done.
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No, THE PROBLEM hasn't been solved. THE PROBLEM was "avoid climate change associated catastrophe". That's was their retrospective pointed out. Even had they come up with a 'free' solar panel, it would not have decreased CO2 output enough to avoid the forcings found in current climate models (whether or not you believe in that model is irrelevant for the sake of this discussion).
That is an important distinction. They basically ran the numbers and figured out they could not 'win' this one. But you hav
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Dante-inspired future envisioned
So you are saying we will all be frozen in a giant block of ice [wikipedia.org]?
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Solar only feels like half a solution without cheap, high capacity heavy-cycle batteries capable of running everything for several days with zero power input and providing boost power for when solar output lags.
I'm thinking like 120kWh for under $10k.
If there's some way to store enough potential solar energy you can generate then even something like 15w/sq ft ought to be adequate.
What does it mean? (Score:2, Insightful)
It means you ain't smarter than the generations that went before you.
If you don't like the choices previous generations made, you first should figure out WHY they made those choices before deciding they were wrong.
Re:What does it mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't like the choices previous generations made, you first should figure out WHY they made those choices before deciding they were wrong.
And you can learn a lot in the process of finding this out. Sometimes I wonder why nobody has tried X, I look it up and 9 times out of 10 there are good reasons, and I learn what they are instead of wasting time. Then there's the 1 time out of 10, like when I asked why nobody invented a hydraulic anti-roll system for cars that can also control squat and dive, years before FRICS was used in F1 (originally I was thinking it could get around the problem of sway bars getting bent in offroad racing).
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This reminds me of an expression I'm now quite fond of:
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Seemed like a good idea at the time (Score:2)
If you don't like the choices previous generations made, you first should figure out WHY they made those choices before deciding they were wrong.
Most of the time the answer boils down to "it seemed like a good idea at the time". We use fossil fuels because they were available and we figured out how to make the economical sooner than some of the alternatives. We didn't know about some of the environmental side effects at the time. Same with nuclear. We tried all sorts of things with radiation that we now consider insane because we didn't know any better at the time. We figured much of it out in time but we didn't magically know all the problems
This is a good reminder for all technocrats (Score:5, Insightful)
I have seen - predominantly on Slashdot, obviously, but also elsewhere, a sort of naive technocrats (who are often also libertarians) believing that as soon as some technology is needed, the invisible hand of the market magically creates this technology so one only has to sit and wait for this magic solution to appear out of thin air. The more down-to-earth kind of these people even tried to explain this magic by telling that this process happens by throwing enough money at a problem.
Unfortunately - and TFA is a picture book example of this - reality doesn't work that way. Breakthroughs don't happen by magic, they happen by meticulous research and a shitload of small steps. Solutions don't suddenly appear just when they are needed, a long lead time of research is required. And sometimes this new technology never comes up at all.
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I have seen - predominantly on Slashdot, obviously, but also elsewhere, a sort of naive technocrats (who are often also liberals or progressives or socialists) believing that as soon as some technology is needed, the state magically creates this technology so one only has to sit and wait for this magic solution to appear out of thin air. The more down-to-earth kind of these people even tried to explain this magic by telling that this process happens by throwing enough money at a problem.
Unfortunately - and
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Butthurt much?
Well, fact is that governments sponsor most of basic research. It still takes very long time to fruit and I think most people who want the government to continue funding basic research are well aware of it.
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Well, fact is that governments sponsor most of basic research. It still takes very long time to fruit and I think most people who want the government to continue funding basic research are well aware of it.
I'm registered Libertarian and I support government sponsored basic research. Why? It's not a problem well solved by a free market.
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Bitchslapping? Come on, Anonymous Coward, your "real world examples" weren't bitchslapping, they are meaningless in matter of this discussion. Simply because they weren't about innovations, research or anything remotely similar. They were just about some government funded manufacturing being expensive. What does it have to do with anything I've written?
Don't be a Pavlov's dog next time.
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Go grow some reading comprehension, Pavlov's dog.
I've never stated anything about "forced green energy efforts" at all. The only thing I've written about is that the invisible hand that magically creates solutions when they are needed does not exist and every research process is a long strings of small steps so sitting and waiting for a magical solution to every problem to appear out of thin air is delusional.
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Buzz words instead of thinking (Score:3)
dunkelfalke (91624) writes:
I have seen - predominantly on Slashdot, obviously, but also elsewhere, a sort of naive technocrats (who are often also libertarians) believing that as soon as some technology is needed, the invisible hand of the market magically creates this technology so one only has to sit and wait for this magic solution to appear out of thin air. The more down-to-earth kind of these people even tried to explain this magic by telling that this process happens by throwing enough money at a problem.
--and Anonymous Coward responds
I have seen - predominantly on Slashdot, obviously, but also elsewhere, a sort of naive technocrats (who are often also liberals or progressives or socialists) believing that as soon as some technology is needed, the state magically creates this technology so one only has to sit and wait for this magic solution to appear out of thin air. The more down-to-earth kind of these people even tried to explain this magic by telling that this process happens by throwing enough money at a problem.
OK, somebody should moderate both of these as "troll".
There is some insight here, but the insight is completely washed out by the gratuitous insults and use of deliberately slanted vocabulary.
In fact, the market is good at solving some types of problems. And government is good at solving some of the types of problems that the market isn't good at. But people of all political views always call approaches that don't fit their ideology "throwing money
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And then they assume (again, by magical thinking) that the invisible hand isn't busy lining its own pockets and that it will arrive at optimal outcomes. Optimal for who?
Commerce as it exists today means the invisible hand has been bought off by lob
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So, what you're offended by is government interference in the economy?
Because "bought off by lobbyists" is exactly that - government interference in the economy.
It's interesting, by the by, that you seem to have the exact same idea regard
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No, what I'm offended by is the magical, bullshit thinking of certain kinds of economics which claims the free market solves problems and achieves optimal outcomes, and the fetishization of the capitalism as some holy and noble goal which contains Higher Truth -- because I think it's a lie and a fairy tale.
LOL, no ... it i
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Sometimes the new technology was just sitting there disused all along. There are a lot of things that are sitting around that are waiting to be rediscovered. Hybrid cars for example were made in the late 1800s/early 1900s.
There are a lot of factors involved... the invention, making the invention marketable, getting the factories able to mass produce it and the parts required. Just small innovations like a machine that can twist metal links for a chain can mean immense improvements in product availability
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I think you're generally right about the subject, you've however completely confused "libertarians" with "liberals".
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Its true that "solutions dont suddenly appear just when they are needed", but your not going to find them if you dont look. And sometimes all the assumptions that the "established" research communities make hide the answer from them. Especially when much of the research is funded by groups with a conflict of interest.
Its no magic wand, but I, fo
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Of course it is needed. I, for one, like clean air, clean water, trees not damaged by acid rain and while a trip to Pripyat was fun - in an eerie way - you have to strictly stay on the roads, because outside of these the radiation is still strong enough for better not having kids after sitting on a tree stem.
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Well, the problem here in Germany is that our government is a bunch of amateurs who don't know what they are doing and thus follow a nauseating zig-zag course.
On one hand, renewable energy in Germany is indeed increasing. On the other hand, some goals were indeed abandoned after the ridiculous sanctions of Russia started to backfire, sinking the German economy after it barely started walking out of the 2008-2009 recession.
my takeaway (Score:5, Interesting)
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This is my biggest problem with "green" things.
Sure, we can make changes. But what impact will the changes have and, compared to what will happen otherwise, is that better for us or not? If the changes enforced by the new ideas actually cost us more than just carrying on anyway, or gain us nothing, we're really just wasting time.
As such, I often think that all the "renewable" debate is taking too long. Can't we just pump that money into fusion and be done with it? That would give us a kickstart to having
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Not only do these people not know, but even worse, they do not care. They just go ahead and do it anyway.
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The paper seems even lamer than that:
part 1 - REC failed
part 2 - Hansen says we're doomed
part 2a - we'd be doomed even if REC succeeded
part 3 - solution: "spend more money on R&D"
That was 3 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't "invent" cheaper tech--it only gets cheaper if you invest in mass-producing it. They gave up 3 years ago, and since then market forces have actually achieved price parity [cleantechnica.com] for renewables in a lot of the world. It wasn't any new "magic bullet" research that did it, but incremental improvements driven by economies of scale. Yes, government played a big role, but primarily as a driver of demand and investor in manufacturing.
The climate does not have time to wait for a new technology to be developed and go through the whole sequence of commercialization and commoditization. The solar panels, wind turbines and batteries we already have can do the job--and the more we build, the cheaper they get.. This is one place I wish market purists would get on board--put a price on carbon, and solutions will come out of the woodwork and plummet in price.
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Except market purists balk at this because "putting a price on carbon" is an artificial thing - it's screwing around with the markets. The markets have already spoken: the externalities of climate change (relocation costs, war, health costs) have a lower cost than trying to develop alternatives. These costs are already really accounted for, even though they ar
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Scale is only part of the equation (Score:2)
You can't "invent" cheaper tech--it only gets cheaper if you invest in mass-producing it.
That's only sort of half true. You can invent a technology that is fundamentally less expensive than previous alternatives at the same production scales. It's not merely a matter of more = cheaper.
Why would anyone expect Google to be special? (Score:5, Insightful)
What did it mean that one of the world's most ambitious and capable innovation companies couldn't invent a cheap renewable energy tech?
Umm, nothing. Google has no special expertise in energy tech. This is WAY outside their core businesses where they have a proven competence. The notion that they would to solve the economic problem of renewable energy where everyone else had (so far) failed is somewhere between well intentioned altruism and pure undiluted hubris. (not sure where on that scale though) The only thing Google has is smart people and a huge bank account. Those are nice assets to work with but just because you can throw smart people and money at a problem doesn't mean a solution will magically appear in a timely manner. Research is unpredictable and requires long term dedication. And even if you do succeed in coming up with a nifty new technology it doesn't automatically mean that the economics of it will be favorable. I'm not saying Google shouldn't try - I'm glad to see them working on and/or bankrolling research such problems. My point is that Google shouldn't be expected to be more likely to solve the problem than any number of other companies/organizations that have worked on these problems.
Google is not unique (Score:2)
Lots of smart people + huge bank account + significant access to the world's accumulated knowledge.
None of which is unique to Google. Google does not have privileged access to more than a tiny tiny subset of the world's information and none of that is specific to energy technology.
It's a formula worth trying on the problems that matter - in the past, lots of smart people and a huge bank account have only been applied by governments to military applications.
Baloney. AT&T, IBM, Westinghouse, GE and lots of other companies have had huge bank accounts and Nobel prize winning research departments. Bell Labs alone was responsible for 8 Nobel prizes, unix, C, transistors, lasers, CCDs, radio astronomy and more.
Google hubris (Score:2)
What it means is that Google has a tendency to assume the set of intelligent people in the world (outside academia perhaps) is a subset of the set of Google employees.
it means the laws of physics are for real (Score:2)
and no amount of fiddling by a hack Supreme Court can change it. not even Google.
Re:Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is this almost religious fanatical devotion to the idea of "Mother earth" and the idea of "Renewable technology"
Why does it have to be renewable? The actual problem is converting CO2 from a solid to a gas. Stopping that is far more important than being renewable. Fusion isn't renewable... we'd run out of Deuterium in a couple of billion years... so we should abandon that as well?
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I think people would settle for fusion. It seems that fusion is also a difficult problem to crack.
It is, and will continue to be, so long as governemnts keep paying people to not build fusion reactors. My guess is that, when we finally get a working fusion reactor, it will be developed in a few years by a company that completely ignores all the 'basic research' governments have funded over the last fifty years.
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So it will be like launching passengers into space by private companies who completely ignore the 'basic research' governments have funded for the last fifty years.
Let me know how that works out.
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Citation needed (Score:2)
It is, and will continue to be, so long as governemnts keep paying people to not build fusion reactors.
Please cite a single incidence of any government actually paying someone to not build a working fusion reactor.
My guess is that, when we finally get a working fusion reactor, it will be developed in a few years by a company that completely ignores all the 'basic research' governments have funded over the last fifty years.
Based on what? Something more than a hunch I hope. Or perhaps the simpler answer is that it's a really tough problem to figure out. Research doesn't care who funds it. Either the findings are useful or they aren't.
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He's referring to a graph that was recently discussed on /. [slashdot.org], where various levels of funding are graphed against the probable time to develop a working fusion reactor. That graph shows the current level of funding as never achieving its goal.
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so long as governemnts keep paying people to not build fusion reactors
lolwut?! I think you accidently inserted a 'not' in there.
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So why hasn't some company just built a fusion reactor and made untold billions of dollars? Perhaps it's because it isn't a simple problem, and they are waiting for the government to pay for all the really expensive "basic research" (really development of the challenging engineering needed) before they jump in and commercialize it.
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Fusion is just 20 Billion years away!
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Fusion isn't renewable... we'd run out of Deuterium in a couple of billion years
That's renewable enough.
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That should be long enough for the sun to go red giant, no? I think we’ll have plenty of deuterium on Earth after that...
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The problem is this almost religious fanatical devotion to the idea of "Mother earth" and the idea of "Renewable technology"
Why does it have to be renewable? The actual problem is converting CO2 from a solid to a gas. Stopping that is far more important than being renewable. Fusion isn't renewable... we'd run out of Deuterium in a couple of billion years... so we should abandon that as well?
Fusion will have the same issue that Nuclear has once. It has a great ability to create destruction so the environmentalists won't want it.
It's not that we don't have green energy capabilities today - we do, it's called Nuclear - it's that those green energy capabilities also come with a lot of risk, and the environmentalists, et al do not want to take that risk.
Problem is you can't have your cake and eat it too....well you can, but then you might be radioactive...
Yet (Score:2)
Re:Yet (Score:4, Insightful)
Solar cell costs are plunging, while their efficiencies rise. I predict a collision, a market and a profit.
You might see one, if you could just plug solar cells into your house and magically get power all day. Most of our power usage in our house is at night, when... oops... there's no solar power.
So now you need batteries and inverters and all kinds of other junk to provide power when we're actually home. And you need enough to provide power to the whole house for a few days to cover the days when there's hardly any sun.
Solar cells could cost $0, and they still probably wouldn't make sense when compared to grid power that isn't made artifiicially expensive by Greenist boondoggles.
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Huh? Only major thing I can think of is charging an electric car.
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Re:Yet (Score:4, Informative)
Really? Its 15.54 currently here in the UK, and its already dark. And I'm not even home yet. When I get home, there's the heating to go on (gas, luckily), food to be cooked (gas hob, electric oven), the house to be lit (electric), housework to be done (electric), and then entertainment for the evening (usually electric consuming). So from when I get home at 17.30 to when I go to bed at 22.30, there's 5 hours of electricity usage.
And that's not counting things like night storage heaters, economy 7 power use washing machines or dish washers that can be put on overnight etc.
So yes, the bulk of our power usage (and Im not the poster you replied to) is over night.
Anecdotal "evidence" (Score:2)
So yes, the bulk of our power usage (and Im not the poster you replied to) is over night.
So of course your usage habits clearly apply to everyone else in the world and nobody is ever in their home during the day. [/sarcasm]
If you want to trade anecdotal evidence the bulk of our electricity usage is during the day during the summer when our AC is running. Most of the night usage could easily be stored in a battery bank that could fit inside our house.
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Location does have an impact but you can look at peak usage data.
For example in Florida peak usage in summer is from noon to 9PM so yes a good bit of the usage is at night.
In the winter it is 6am to 10am in the morning and 6pm to 10pm at night.
Most power is used in the evening and the morning because that is when people are doing things like cook, laundry and are frankly home.
Your argument about anecdotal evidence is correct but the real usage data does show that peak power usage is in the evenings and not
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Really? Its 15.54 currently here in the UK, and its already dark. And I'm not even home yet. When I get home, there's the heating to go on (gas, luckily), food to be cooked (gas hob, electric oven), the house to be lit (electric), housework to be done (electric), and then entertainment for the evening (usually electric consuming). So from when I get home at 17.30 to when I go to bed at 22.30, there's 5 hours of electricity usage.
And that's not counting things like night storage heaters, economy 7 power use washing machines or dish washers that can be put on overnight etc.
So yes, the bulk of our power usage (and Im not the poster you replied to) is over night.
In the UK (like most first world nations) electricity peaks at around 2pm when commercial demand and residential demand are both high. By nightfall, commercial demand is ending (which accounts for a lot more total usage than residential) and residential power tapers off starting at 6pm.
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Thats great - doesn't help me tho if the goal is to replace residential grid power with locally generated solar power tho, does it?
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Thats great - doesn't help me tho if the goal is to replace residential grid power with locally generated solar power tho, does it?
If your goal is to not have a grid any more, then yes. Doing away with the grid is something no one has mentioned in the context of a national energy plan, though. If your goal is to generate enough power for your home, you can do it during the day, sell it to the utility (if net metering is available in your area) and then use power from the grid at night. When your meter shows 0 net power, you have generated all the power you need (just not at the right time). There's no reason to stop using the grid.
until your neighbor does the same (Score:3)
> When your meter shows 0 net power, you have generated all the power you need (just not at the right time).
With zero net power, your electric bill is zero. Yay!
You tell your neighbor about it. He does the same, and pretty soon everyone is getting all of their power for free. Everyone generates power during rhe day when they aren't home, and uses power at night, when solar doesn't work. Nobody pays for anything.
Of course since nobody pays, there's no money to generate power at night. Moral of story
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No. Winter peaking areas peak at night, when it is coldest. Summer peaking areas are as you describe.
Daily peaks will still occur at 2pm during mild seasons. But the peak that drives the grid design is the coldest day of the year.
Peak [Re:Yet] (Score:4, Interesting)
Solar cell costs are plunging, while their efficiencies rise. I predict a collision, a market and a profit.
You might see one, if you could just plug solar cells into your house and magically get power all day. Most of our power usage in our house is at night, when... oops... there's no solar power.
No, actually, in America the highest electrical usage is in the afternoon. It's driven by air conditioning loads in summer, along with the fact that business and industry tends to use the most power only during working hours. There's a slight bump at about 7, but it's not as big as the afternoon peak.
Quick calculations suggest that you can replace about 10% of US electrical usage with solar with no disruption at all, and something like 20 to 30 percent with only minimal disruption.
That's not enough to solve the energy problem. But, with the electricity market in the US at something like half a trillion dollars a year, that's a substantial market (and substantial profit)
Nonsensical hypotheticals (Score:2)
Solar cells could cost $0, and they still probably wouldn't make sense when compared to grid power that isn't made artifiicially expensive by Greenist boondoggles.
You might have a point if fossil fuel generation actually had to pay for all the environmental damage it causes. But since they don't and the real cost of heating your home is higher than you might guess from your monthly bill.
And if you think solar cells for free would not make economic sense for a huge portion of the population then you have NO idea what you are talking about. Nothing actually costs zero but super cheap solar cells with good efficiency would massively change the world energy markets.
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"Most of our power usage in our house is at night"
Maybe for you specifically but for the grid in general power usage is usually highest during the day. This is especially obvious during the summer when the use of air conditioners requires a number of peak power plants to keep he grid from browning out. Most solar systems are grid tie, which do not require batteries, nearly all solar systems require inverters as homes use AC power and solar panels produce only DC power. Its not a perfect situation but it
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Solar cell costs are plunging, while their efficiencies rise. I predict a collision, a market and a profit.
You might see one, if you could just plug solar cells into your house and magically get power all day. Most of our power usage in our house is at night, when... oops... there's no solar power.
So now you need batteries and inverters and all kinds of other junk to provide power when we're actually home. And you need enough to provide power to the whole house for a few days to cover the days when there's hardly any sun.
Solar cells could cost $0, and they still probably wouldn't make sense when compared to grid power that isn't made artifiicially expensive by Greenist boondoggles.
This is a pretty sad, and wrong, assertion. Electricity usage from industrial and commercial load peaks during the day, and those two combined far eclipse residential usage. Even if you could just generate solar power during the day to offset demand from those two, and keep a dirty coal burning plant around for all the TVs and light bulbs that are on in homes in the evening, we would be a lot farther ahead.
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Solar-thermal with storage. You get power at night.
The 400 MW Ivanpah solar thermal plant is on the same power line as Hoover Dam (both are near Las Vegas). It didn't need its own storage unit, because the dam already provides huge amounts of storage. Whenever the solar plant is running, the dam can save water for later. Not all locations have an existing dam conveniently near, so solar-thermal will need to build their own storage units on-site. There are several options, and which is best to use is an
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Solar and wind are just pieces of a puzzle. If I take an average house, I have to either tear it down and rebuild it so it could use passive solar heating/cooling or I would have to either use a fuel or the electric grid to keep the temperature bearable, especially in Texas.
What Google should have done is look at the missing pieces -- storage and transportation. This could be batteries, super caps, or even relatively energy-consuming conversions like converting water to hydrogen or CO2 in the air to propa
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Why is the parent modded down as a troll?
The post is entirely correct. These other sources of energy are not efficient and reliable enough to be financially viable right now. This may change in ten or twenty years, but right now, solar and wind just aren't where they need to be.
Slashdot itself is becoming less and less a site for geeks and nerds. It has been infected by dogmatic brats who cannot tolerate discussion. This is just one example of many - I'm sure you'll find more as the comments flow in.
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In the old days, I would have been astonished to get this far down the page without someone suggesting that we just wait for the AC to figure out how to reverse entropy.
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Why is the parent modded down as a troll?
The post is entirely correct. These other sources of energy are not efficient and reliable enough to be financially viable right now. This may change in ten or twenty years, but right now, solar and wind just aren't where they need to be.
Slashdot itself is becoming less and less a site for geeks and nerds. It has been infected by dogmatic brats who cannot tolerate discussion. This is just one example of many - I'm sure you'll find more as the comments flow in.
Because the parent is a troll. And wrong. Reliable is a term you are both misusing. Solar and wind generation is perfectly reliable, given the predictions that can be made about the source (since the reliability in question is of the cells/turbines themselves, which are extremely durable). Do they generate enough to satisfy year-round demand? Of course not. Neither do coal plants, and neither do nuclear plants, and neither do natural gas plants (by themselves). Are you saying those technologies are "u
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Interesting definition of 'reliable' you pulled from a dark place there jeff. How does reliable related to 'capacity factor' in fantasy land?
BTW the last generation of turbines were so reliable they couldn't pay for their own maintenance once the tax breaks ended.
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Because I said something that they do not like to hear and have response but to call me a troll.
Solar will always have a problem with the production vs demand curves and no smart grids will not fix it only storage will.
Wind is actually a better bet but still needs backing plants using natural gas.
The simple truth is that we are already using and have been using for a long time the only cheap, reliable, and renewable power source, hydroelectric.
But yes slashdot does seem to be less and less full of really kn
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Perfect is the enemy of good (Score:2)
The problem is that is only true for a few hours around solar noon.
For now. Furthermore a LOT of energy usage occurs exactly during that time. Let's say you have a grocery store and you need to power refrigerators. Guess when the maximum power drain from air conditioning will be? Exactly during mid day when the solar cells are at maximum efficiency. In my opinion most industrial businesses should have a rooftop covered in solar cells. It is wasted space now, it generates clean(er) energy right when it is needed, it distributes the grid, turns variable power costs int
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"Guess when the maximum power drain from air conditioning will be? Exactly during mid day when the solar cells are at maximum efficiency. "
Actually no.
Peak temperatures are after solar noon and do not really cool off until well into the evening.
So in Florida in the summer the peak energy use is from 1 to 8 PM
Solar noon in the summer is at 11 am because of daylight savings time. So if peak production is 3 hours of solar noon in the summer in FL then your off peak production at 2pm so your production curve st
MOD PARENT UP!!! (Score:2, Flamebait)
Computer guys have a very dangerous tendency to think that because they can fix Mom's computer, and people are always asking for their help, that they are somehow much sharper than the regular person. All it really means is that they have some specific information that others lack. This leads to the absolutely sickening arrogance you see exhibited here all the time,
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Wait a second now. Don't put all programmers in the same bucket. Those who think that way will push keys 8 hours a day until they retire. Real programmers are very knowledgeable in the field they work, BUT THEY AREN'T EXPERTS.
As a programmer analyst I actually learned to do people's jobs so I can optimize/automate as well as reduce the number of mistakes. I've automated multiple engineering tasks throughout the last 6 years. Some of these tasks required hours of engineers pounding information into my small
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Well, no. What really happened, which you'd know if you read the article, was that they investigated whether google's financial backing could help in speeding up the development of tech that could build renewable power plants for cheap. After a couple of years of building up hard evidence and looking at detailed engineering reports - something that armchair experts like you would never dirty their hands with - they realized the answer was no. This doesn't seem like being 'out of touch' to me. It seems like
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You believe that EVIL OIL COMPANIES bought out those 200mpg carburettor patents, don't you?
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Some were, one of the more famous "200 MPG carburettor" is the Fish carburettor [wikipedia.org] was actually produced and of course got anywhere near an impossible 200 MPG, but as a more effiecent system, it was used by weekend racers untill fuel injection and computer fuel management made engine tuning a programming exercise.
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'Grok' means understand at a deep level.
Tesla thought he could transmit power without wires. He evidently _didn't_ Grok electromagnetism. Despite what many non-EEs claim.
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Tesla thought he could transmit power without wires. He evidently _didn't_ Grok electromagnetism. Despite what many non-EEs claim.
Do tell. [mit.edu] Using the same principles Tesla was using.
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More accurately, it's hard to run Adwords on a wind power plant. Capitalism, bitches.
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There rarely is a single cause (Score:2)
You are wrong. The gigantic economic boom of the 20th century was fuelled by cheap oil.
There is no single cause for such a complicated occurrence. Oil is certainly a part of the equation but there are a LOT more variables than just the price of oil.
Re:There rarely is a single cause (Score:4, Insightful)
See how much innovation and growth you can manage when just brewing your cup of coffee in the morning either requires you to build a fire or fork over lots of money for a few watts.