World's Largest Single-Site Solar Farm Goes Online (electrek.co) 62
The world's largest single-site solar farm has gone online in the United Arab Emirates. Called the Al Dhafra solar farm, it features almost 4 million bifacial solar panels and will power nearly 200,000 homes -- all while eliminating 2.4 million tons of carbon emissions annually. Electrek reports: Now that Al Dhafra is online, the UAE's solar power production capacity has increased to 3.2 GW. In September, EWEC called for proposals to develop a 1.5 GW solar farm in Al Khazna near Abu Dhabi. UAE is aiming to triple its renewable energy capacity to 14 GW by 2030. The UAE is hosting COP28 in Dubai, which kicks off on November 30, so, understandably, its rulers would time the launch of the world's largest solar farm just ahead of that event -- it's simply good PR.
UAE is rightly being criticized for putting the CEO of its state oil company, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company -- the world's 12th-biggest oil company by production -- in charge of COP28. It's also being criticized for hosting COP28 yet having an all-of-the-above approach to energy. The UAE Energy Strategy 2050 targets an energy mix of 44% clean energy, 38% gas, 12% "clean coal" (yes, it really says that), and 6% nuclear. It says it will become carbon neutral by 2050, but how it will do that on 50% fossil fuels is anyone's guess.
UAE is rightly being criticized for putting the CEO of its state oil company, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company -- the world's 12th-biggest oil company by production -- in charge of COP28. It's also being criticized for hosting COP28 yet having an all-of-the-above approach to energy. The UAE Energy Strategy 2050 targets an energy mix of 44% clean energy, 38% gas, 12% "clean coal" (yes, it really says that), and 6% nuclear. It says it will become carbon neutral by 2050, but how it will do that on 50% fossil fuels is anyone's guess.
Re: It will power 200,000 homes, you say (Score:3)
Re:It will power 200,000 homes, you say (Score:5, Insightful)
You know they have huge electricity demand for air conditioning, right? Mostly during the day? When the sun shines? Stop parroting fossil and nuclear shill disinformation. You're being a useful idiot.
Re:It will power 200,000 homes, you say (Score:4, Interesting)
You know they have huge electricity demand for air conditioning, right? Mostly during the day? When the sun shines? Stop parroting fossil and nuclear shill disinformation.
Yet, the parent was saying exactly that: although those solar panels could offset some of the AC demand during the day (if you ever went to the UAE, you know they actually also need AC at night for a big part of the year), that doesn't qualify as "powering x thousand homes".
You're being a useful idiot.
You're being an idiot. Stop parroting fossil fuels shill disinformation.
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"Powers x homes" is for electricity what "football fields" is for area. It does not mean these panels are connected to x homes and if those homes need electricity, they can only get it from these panels, and if they don't, the electricity has nowhere else to go. Electricity is fungible.
People like you guys who sabotage public discourse with deliberate bullshit are evil incarnate.
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"People like you guys who sabotage public discourse with deliberate bullshit are evil incarnate."
Can't stand to hear people express their sincere fact based opinions, get out of the kitchen. Discussion involves hearing opinions you disagree with. Get over it!
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There is a difference between ignorance and spewing bullshit. You know what you're doing.
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"Powers x homes" is for electricity what "football fields" is for area.
No it is not. Not when your electricity source has a capacity factor of 25% (in the UAE), and needs a lot of other infrastructure (backups + fossil fuels) to actually power homes. A correct way to use this "Powers x homes" unit of measurement would be to qualify the mix of an electricity grid. As in:
- a grid made purely of solar/wind can power 0 homes. Or X homes, but only for 6 hours a day.
- a grid made of solar/wind/storage can power Y homes (Y being less than X, which would be the total homes in the coun
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I think most people understand that when someone says a solar panel can power something, they mean only during daylight hours.
Peak demand for AC is during the day, and solar nicely tracks it. It directly removes fossil fuels from the grid, because fossil fuels are what are used for that kind of peaking. The UAE only has one half finished nuclear plant anyway.
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solar nicely tracks it
No it does not. Solar peak is not the same as AC peak, unlike what people might believe. This has been explained here [slashdot.org] for instance.
Solar is still good in the sense (or if), that it removes fossil fuels burning.
The UAE only has one half finished nuclear plant anyway.
The nuclear plant itself is already "finished". In a nuclear plant, you can then add as many (as long as you have enough place) reactors as you want. At the moment, it has 3 operational reactors, and one more under construction [wikipedia.org]. Each reactor has a capacity of 1345MW, which means the nuclear plant curr
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For only during the night: Globally energy use is higher during the day than the night, and that is extra true in countries with a lot of air conditioning like this. Just that it doesn't work at night (or in northern places during winter) hardly makes it useless. If you can provide a huge amount of electicity during peak hours with solar that's very useful. Especially for countries that want to reduce import of gas, reduce coal use, want to reduce CO2, etc.
The pricing on solar has went down substantially in
Re:It will power 200,000 homes, you say (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe it has some use in places where there is peak demand during the day from AC, as a peak generator to coincide with peak AC demand. But that's not 'powering x thousand homes'. It does not and cannot do that.
Peak solar output does not correlate well to peak AC demand. Peak solar output is around noon but peak AC demand is more like 4 PM. The reason for this is logical once it is thought through, the sun is heating up the air all day so while the solar intensity is fading it is still more energy going into the air than is lost to space. After this net heating of the air continues there's still some sunlight keeping the air warm until sunset, and that roughly coincides with the time people are running large appliances at home like ovens, dishwashers, and clothes dryers in addition to air conditioning.
There's more to electricity demand than just AC but AC will be a large contributor. It is the mismatch between solar output and electrical demand that has created what is being called a "duck curve".
https://www.cnet.com/home/ener... [cnet.com]
There are mitigation strategies against the duck curve, primary among them for California (where the concept of a duck curve originated) are batteries, pre-cooling, and load shedding. When it is AC load driving the bulk of electricity demand "load shedding" is a euphemism for turning off your AC and allowing your house to become warm and humid. So the idea appears to have houses get chilled during the day when people are at work and school, then allow them to warm up as they come home for their evening routine, then hopefully electrical demand drops off enough after sunset to where they can run AC again so they aren't sweating in bed all night.
If the idea is to put batteries on homes as a mitigation strategy then that's an application that is competing with electric vehicles. If the idea is to use mid-day EV charging as a means to mitigate against the duck curve then that means needing to put EV chargers in parking lots, where people park away from home, and that will be expensive. Solar power is a poor match for electricity demand, and electric vehicles will only make that mismatch worse.
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Peak solar output is around noon
That's only true if the panels are installed facing due south.
If they are installed facing southwest, the peak is in the afternoon.
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That's only true if the panels are installed facing due south.
If they are installed facing southwest, the peak is in the afternoon.
Do that and you are sacrificing the ability for solar power to meet the morning peak demand to better meet the evening peak demand. Have some solar panels facing east to better match morning demand, and some facing west to better match evening demand, means sacrificing total daily solar power production to flatten the production curve. If the solar panels are on a moving platform that tracks the sun then that is adding installation and maintenance costs that will make solar power less competitive against
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you are sacrificing the ability for solar power to meet the morning peak demand to better meet the evening peak demand.
Demand is higher in the afternoon, so that's a worthwhile tradeoff.
If the solar panels are on a moving platform that tracks the sun
That's not cost-effective. It's cheaper to install more panels than to use tracking.
we know that AC demand will still be quite high after sunset
Pre-chill a tank of water when power production peaks during the day. Use the tank as a heat sink after the sun goes down.
Then comes the issues of using solar power to provide heat in winter
Buildings aren't heated in the UAE.
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Buildings aren't heated in the UAE.
UAE is far enough from the equator that they see seasonal shifts in cooling demand, and a quick search of the web tells me that UAE does require building heating. They don't require much for building heating in UAE but it is not zero to maintain safe indoor temperatures. If we make this a more general than just what UAE needs for energy then there's going to be issues for solar power providing energy for heating and cooling.
Pre-chill a tank of water when power production peaks during the day. Use the tank as a heat sink after the sun goes down.
That is a generally good idea for managing peaks and valleys in daily cooling dema
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Use the tank as a heat sink after the sun goes down.
How?
Re:It will power 200,000 homes, you say (Score:5, Insightful)
You are almost correct, but you are thinking this the wrong way around. Without solar, they would have to burn gas during the days also. With solar, they can save the gas during the day.
There are also multiple grid scale battery technologies under development. E.g. liquid metal batteries and air-iron batteries. They will most likely solve the problem with day-night cycle. Much larger problem with solar is winter-summer cycle in Northern countries, where there is no solar for 3 months during the winter, when energy usage peaks because of heating.
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You’re exactly right, but Budenny is clearly not arguing in good faith. Most of their post focuses on the UK where hours insolation per year are obviously much lower than in the fricking UAE.
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"Evenings and nights too?"
Yes! Evenings and nights too. You see, we have these things now called "batteries". They're really amazing. When you have more power than you need, you charge them up. They hold this charge until a time when you need power. Then you use these "batteries" for whatever you like. For example, when the sun goes down and you'd like to have light, you can use artificial illumination powered by a "battery".
These things are absolute game changers. You should check them out some tim
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Yes! Evenings and nights too. You see, we have these things now called "batteries".
A couple things about batteries. First, batteries cost money and so if we are adding gobs of battery capacity to manage the inherent intermittent nature of solar power then that will add to the cost of our energy. Second, batteries can be used to do more than store energy from solar power because batteries don't know or care where the electricity comes from. Put batteries on the grid and they become available for managing all power sources on the grid, including nuclear power. France has very low greenh
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You cannot power 200,000 homes with solar. You can't afford the batteries, and even if you could, no-one has ever run a system of batteries on that scale. No-one has even tried.
Also don't forget, you run off batteries all night, then you have to recharge the next day. So you need capacity not only to supply the homes during the day, but also to charge the batteries for the coming night.
It would be more accurate to say of the system discussed that it supplements the gas generation and saves fuel during th
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Sure, "powering X homes" is misleading and inaccurate, but it's pretty traditional. I've seen it used to describe everything from solar and wind to traditional renewables like hydro, even nuclear and coal.
But even with nuclear and coal, acting as baseload power back in the day, the number of homes they'd actually supply would vary over the day. They might "supply" 500k homes at like 10am, then only 50k at 6 pm when everybody was cooking and watching TV. Peaking power was still required.
I figure the reaso
Re: It will power 200,000 homes, you say (Score:2)
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... because nobody but you understands that the sun doesn't shine at night. It's a good thing we have you to tell us things that only you are clever enough to notice.
Sure, the sun doesn't shine at night, which means solar without grid storage is not a path to 100% renewable energy. However we are so far from that goal that that's not a problem. You're still reducing the amount of fossile fuels you are burning whenever you use wind or solar.
In the near term renewables backed by load following fossil fuels
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"In the near term renewables backed by load following fossil fuels are the most practical means of achieving a reduction in fossil fuel emissions..."
The claim is that installing wind and/or solar (in this case solar) and operating a hybrid system of solar and gas will lead to lower CO2 emissions than running on the gas alone. I have never seen a proper rigorous study showing this, but am prepared to believe that in dry regions near the equator it may be true of solar.
That is however a proposition which is
Actual numbers (Score:2)
The Al Dhafra solar farm is is 2GW solar farm. They make it sound like a big deal ("all while eliminating 2.4 million tons of carbon emissions annually"), but as a comparison, most nuclear plants in operation nowadays have a capacity of 2-6GW. And they don't just produce electricity when the sun is shining (nighttime is a bitch for that).
It says it will become carbon neutral by 2050, but how it will do that on 50% fossil fuels is anyone's guess.
People have the same question about Germany to be honest, or any country that bets everything on renewables (and gas/coal as backup, although they like to be quiet about
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In reality Germany has now 60% renewables for electricity production without much storage. To go further as some point storage will be needed.
The problem with France is that there was a substantial amount of government investment and the now a have rotten old fleet of reactors and an industry hat needed to be re-nationalized to not go fully bankrupt. And at times, they also had to import electricity to not have outages. But yes, France nuclear plants saved a lot of CO2.
It is just very obvious that it is no
Re: Actual numbers (Score:1)
No, they do not, just because you have nameplate or production capacity doesnâ(TM)t mean you can also consume that energy at the same time.
Most of Germanyâ(TM)s renewable energy is lost or exported and traded for coal/gas/oil from Russia. Itâ(TM)s a neat accounting trick that also allows the UAE to claim full carbon zero on half fossil fuels, because the carbon credit market doesnâ(TM)t care, you could be powering solar panels with halogen lights powered by a coal plant and it would coun
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Sure, nameplate capacity does not mean much. But the 60% figure is *actual production* not capacity.
It is also not true that "most of the energy" is t lost. Some energy is lost because there is not enough grid capacity from north to south Germany. For example, in first half of 2022 it was 4 percent. Source: https://taz.de/Zu-langsamer-Au... [taz.de]
Germany stopped importing oal, coal, gas from Russia completey. https://www.bbc.com/news/busin... [bbc.com]
You know who still imports fuel from Russia: The nuclear industry in vari
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Germany did not stop importing anything from Russia. They claim they COULD/SHOULD in the article mentioned.
Here is the stats from January 2023-June 2023
EU fossil fuel imports from Russia - $18.4B
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In reality Germany has now 60% renewables for electricity production without much storage.
A luxury they can enjoy because of a very capable electrical grid across Europe, with plenty electricity from hydro to the north, nuclear fission to the west, and natural gas to the east and south. Germany sells renewable energy cheap to their neighbors only to have to buy electricity back at a higher price later.
To go further as some point storage will be needed.
Energy storage costs money, and Germany is already seeing high energy costs from an over reliance on intermittent renewable energy sources. Wind power usually peaks at dusk and dawn, which is abo
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It is true that Germany trades electricity. It also has enough capacity that would not not have to. But trade usually benefits both sides. With France, trade is pretty balanced regarding electricity. This year, Germany imported a lot more from Denmark than it exported to Denmark, but this is likely wind power.
But any case, the maximum power imported in 2023 was around 17 GW compared to 73 GW maximum load, while maximum coal production was 30 GW, wind onshore 44 GW, solar 42 GW, gas 14 GW to only cited the b
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the now a have rotten old fleet of reactors
Funny how this rotten old fleet of reactors is still providing cheap and low-CO2 emitting electricity to its neighbors. France has been a net exporter of electricity for the past 50 years, except for 3 months in 2022 when they had to import ~3% of their electricity needs (that's 17GW, compared to the usual 60-80GW they exported every other year. I know the anti-nuclear shills like to focus on those 3 months, and forget about everything else. Also, France is again the top European electricity exporter in 202 [bloomberg.com]
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France has been a net exported. This was not my point.
The points
a) you need to have backup also with nuclear and France relied on exports at various points (not only some months in 2022).
b) Yes EDF was forces to sell electricity cheap below market prices but that also fueled the myth that nuclear power is so cheap.
c) To "nationalize just in order build the next 6 plants" (which is not much from France) should be a clear tell-tale sign that in a free market nobody would do this.
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a) you need to have backup also with nuclear and France relied on exports at various points (not only some months in 2022).
Sure. But overall, even when taking into account some point in time electricity imports, France electricity mix is largely low-carbon (~50g CO2eq/kWh, taking into account those imports). You can take a look at historical data and real-time date here [rte-france.com].
At the time I am writing this for instance, France is consuming ~56GW, exporting 12.5GW, and importing ~2GW. And emissions of 37g CO2eq/kWh.
It is also not a problem to rely on imports/exports to balance the grid. But it is interesting to see which countries are
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The Al Dhafra solar farm is is 2GW solar farm. They make it sound like a big deal ("all while eliminating 2.4 million tons of carbon emissions annually"), but as a comparison, most nuclear plants in operation nowadays have a capacity of 2-6GW. And they don't just produce electricity when the sun is shining (nighttime is a bitch for that).
The Barakah nuclear power plant in UAE has a nameplate capacity of over 5 GW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Consider that solar power farms have a capacity factor of about 30% and a well run nuclear power plant has a capacity factor of about 90% means one nuclear power plant with a rated capacity of 5 GW has an equivalent annual energy output to 15 GW of solar. This gets to be even more profound if the heat off the nuclear power plant is used to desalinate water since that avoids transmission, conversi
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I seem to remember some concern about fissile material supplies should we significantly grow our nuclear footprint. I mean if we went all breeders, that would be one thing, but that has been verboten for many years now.
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A really big chunk of the UAE power requirements are going to be for air conditioning and fun fact that is mostly when the sun shines. It seems an excellent form of peaker power plant for the likes of the UAE to me.
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However, they continue to produce electricity in heat waves, something nuclear has trouble doing. [slashdot.org]
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Nuclear has no trouble producing electricity during heat waves. It has trouble producing electricity when laws prevent it to do so.
The problem with heatwaves is that on some nuclear plant design (the open loop ones, where they take water from a river for cooling and put it back there afterwards) is that in order to play nice with the wildlife, it cannot be put back if it goes over a specific threshold (28C if I remember correctly), so as not to heat up the river water even more than what the heatwave is cau
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Much of the world does not want nuclear capability in the middle east, for obvious reasons. It is not going to happen.
It already did happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The UAE will build storage to go carbon neutral. It's not like they aren't familiar with doing massive infrastructure projects. They know that the fossil fuel money is going to run out, hence their diversification into high end tourism.
They even managed to put aside a lot of their religious ideology in pursuit of that.
Of course, the other area they are diversifying into is renewable energy. They have a lot of sun, a lot of unused land, and could use the shade.
They have a single nuclear power plant in the UA
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It's not a good region for nuclear power though. There are issues with water supply for cooling
Grasping at straws here, to justify your anti-nuclear views. The Barakah power plant [wikipedia.org] is built on a coastline... There won't be any issue with water supply for cooling. And: the water doesn't get "too hot" to cool the reactor. The problem with heat is when you have a nuclear plant that takes and puts back water in a river, because of wildlife concerns. It is a lot more easier to dilute slightly warm water in the sea before putting it back, so nuclear plants located on coastlines don't have problems with that
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They make it sound like a big deal ("all while eliminating 2.4 million tons of carbon emissions annually"), but as a comparison, most nuclear plants in operation nowadays have a capacity of 2-6GW. And they don't just produce electricity when the sun is shining (nighttime is a bitch for that).
Indeed. But they also cost a lot more and have fuck all chance of getting built in any reasonable timeframe. If you want to secure future supplies for your great grandchildren then nuclear is great. If you want your great grandchildren to actually survive the climate apocalypse then nuclear is simply not an option.
Time frames matter. If I'm sitting on a train track looking at an oncoming train the smart choice is to move off the train track rather than wait for an infrastructure project to move the tracks s
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If you want to secure future supplies for your great grandchildren then nuclear is great. If you want your great grandchildren to actually survive the climate apocalypse then nuclear is simply not an option.
If only we could build both at the same time, because they don't rely on the same skills/materials... Kinda like what China is doing, or France did, or Sweden, or...
Time frames matter. If I'm sitting on a train track looking at an oncoming train the smart choice is to move off the train track rather than wait for an infrastructure project to move the tracks somewhere else, which will happen long after I've been turned into red goo spread on the tracks.
In your analogy, the train is Earth. You can't just "move off the train track", or even imagining you could (hello Elon, how is Mars looking?), what about all the other passengers who can't?
The smart move (which incidently more and more countries are doing) is to build solar/wind to slow climate change (there is no stopping it, there will be red
Smart, like Norway (Score:1)
A good dealer doesn't use the product.
Re: Smart, like Norway (Score:2)
The UAE (and Norway) has sufficient product for the next 300 years without even needing to drill additional wells. Once you take in account other reserves they are set for many more centuries after that.
This is just another revenue stream for the UAE, they know being a single source provider is risky, sanctions, war, the US and EU drilling its own massive reserves would make a massive dent in their revenue. Right now they are going to pretend to have diversified their power and given they are a giant desert
Ignore the haters (Score:4, Insightful)
While massively expanding oil... (Score:3)
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They've got lots of land, they have got high solar irradiance, they don't have a lot of nuclear. Why burn gas when PV is cheaper?
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Why burn gas when PV is cheaper?
Um, maybe because the sun doesn't shine at night?
Just how cheap is solar PV at local midnight? I have a guess it is quite expensive.
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At current interest rates, batteries are about 65% more expensive than nuclear.
PV Solar is about 70% less.
Given typical usage patterns is it a fair trade.
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/electricity_generation/pdf/AEO2023_LCOE_report.pdf [eia.gov]
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That just means you need to stop when you run out of low hanging fruit, the first third is easy or even profitable. Then you stop.
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The way to fight oil expansion is to buy less oil. They can expand all they like, if nobody is buying it because they have to pay for emissions then it won't matter.
Their target is the developing world, because of the developed world has decided it is going for net zero. That's why so it's so critical that we help the developing world avoid following the same path we did. Fortunately it's a good deal for them - control of their own energy, domestic manufacturing (wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries a
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Storage for top uses is solved. (Score:3)
If you look at the charts, solar and wind when it is available is going to be half as much as any other form of power. Nuclear could be at the same level by 2050 if the lawyers would just stop. That would put wind and solar in places with only sun and wind and no cooling lake/tower, and nuclear where getting that thermodynamic efficiency at a steady state perfected by having a large amount of cooling in reserve.
The right way to settle this question (Score:2)
The question of renewables and net zero always leads to strong, some would say toxic, debates. They descend into personal abuse and accusations of denialism very rapidly. More heat and less light. There is a simple and practical way to settle the debate, and it would be cost effective given what is at stake.
Pick a handful of communities of reasonable size, say a provincial town in the UK or Europe, a local medium sized town in the US or Canada. Pay them whatever it will take to be a pilot site. Make the