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Comment by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5

5 years ago

I'm actually quite shocked at how much energy is produced by solar, especially when compared to residential wind turbines. Panels are efficient, and when it's sunny, you're juicing.

The real challenge is of course bringing down cost of storage, which is the key to make solar systems efficient (not just cheap).

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Scoundreller  5 years ago

> residential wind turbines

Wind has a scalability problem. Residentially, it's only a good sell as a backup supply for when solar isn't cutting it to hopefully prevent generator use. And even that's a tough economic argument.

Towers have huge economies of scale, both in total size and height. So the turbines just keep getting bigger and bigger because it's more and more cost effective.

  • somewhereoutth  5 years ago

    If my understanding is correct there is curious difference in perceived scale with kinetic vs thermal energy. Based on a a rowing machine's advertised metrics, I calculated you could row across the English channel on half a packet of chocolate biscuits.

    • epistasis  5 years ago

      I'm not sure if this impacts your scenario, but the "calorie" commonly used in nutrition is actually a "kcal", or a thousand calories as used by physicists. Most confusing term for units ever.

    • ryanwaggoner  5 years ago

      Put another way: I’ll have to spend an hour on the treadmill to work off the calories in this burger.