Comment by jandrese
12 hours ago
You just slightly missed the crux of the issue here.
The big "problem" with renewables like solar is that once you've installed enough for yourself you are done for like 30 years. There is no monthly sun fee you need to keep paying. There is no solardollar, because there's nothing that needs to be extracted, transported, and sold every single day. A lot of billionaires are in an existential crisis over a world where fossil fuels are no longer the driving force of the economy. That's why we have incessant propaganda against renewable energy.
Even the solar panel market is self defeating. Once there is enough installed power the demand will drop off sharply as the refresh cycle is too long. The feedback loop of capitalism means we are likely to reach that point sooner than you would expect.
That said, don't think I'm like the nuclear power guys of the 50s who claimed that electricity would be so abundant that we wouldn't even bother to meter it. There are still costs with maintenance, repair, administration, debt servicing, and profits. If you look at your power bill today it will probably list generation, distribution, and taxes. Renewables only eliminate the generation costs, which are usually about half of the bill.
> Even the solar panel market is self defeating. Once there is enough installed power the demand will drop off sharply as the refresh cycle is too long.
It's not going to happen soon - solar is still just 8% of world energy production. Even if solar will cover 100% of consumption on a sunny day it still would make sense to buy more panels to have enough output on a cloudy day or in the morning/evening. It's likely production of solar panels will be a good business till at least 2050 and oil business will start to decline before that unless will be propped by corrupt politicians.
8% of electricity, not total world energy.
But the growth rate has been huge for as long as records have been kept, and was a factor of just over 10x between 2014 and 2024, speeding up more recently.
PV and wind together are likely to start breaking the electricity market severely in the first half of the 2030s; I hope, but it's not certain yet, that ongoing battery expansion will allow the demand for electricity to increase and this can continue to the end of the 2030s, because at the current pace of development those scale up to all our energy needs, not merely our present electrical needs, in a bit less than 20 years from now. (PV alone would do all of it in 20 years at present rate of change).
Energy use goes up as civilization advances, and Jevon’s paradox suggests that we’ll use more energy as its cost goes down. Couple that with the need to replace some portion of the installed base of solar capacity over time and I think solar will be a growth industry for the foreseeable future.
I can't believe it's taken this long for someone to mention this. Even just phasing out fossil fuels (if we're still serious about that) plus ordinary growth means today's demand is a fraction of what could potentially be fulfilled by additional solar buildout.
It also assumes that there will never be demand for improved solar generation orthogonal to currently-prioritized metrics. As an example, a nice park near my house was clear-cut to install a solar farm a few years ago. I used to enjoy walks under the trees in that park, and seeing the animals that lived there. Perhaps as solar infrastructure becomes more stable and secure, concerns will turn towards the ecological ramifications of covering so much of the Earth's surface with ecological deserts, and there will be a desire to replace older generations of solar panels with ones that somehow can support or integrate more elegantly with nature. And then the next thing. And then the next thing.
Assuming we consume ~20 TW on average, a metre-squared panel kicks out ~40 W on average, and we halve that to account for batteries and other infra... I reckon we're talking about 1 million square kilometres (people will be along in a sec to check my working, but it's just a Fermi estimate).
Call it 10% of the Sahara.
Bear in mind that if we go all-electric, raw energy consumption falls significantly, many panels will be sited on buildings, solar isn't the only renewable, and solar farms aren't ecological deserts - you can graze animals below them.
Honestly, seems like a good trade to me.
> Even the solar panel market is self defeating. Once there is enough installed power the demand will drop off sharply as the refresh cycle is too long.
If the average panel lifetime is 25 years, and it takes > 25 years to reach "full capacity" (whatever that might mean or whatever level that is at), then by definition there will be a continuous cycle of panel replacement taking place.
It's not as if we get all the PV installed in 12 months and then it lasts for 25 years ...
The 25 year thing comes from the 25 year warranties - they’re generally warrantied to be at 80% power capability at 25 years. I don’t know the real lifetime, but presumably it’s a lot longer than 25 years. And by that point, maybe we’ll have the deuteriumdollar…
The first set of PV panels I put on our van didn't even make their 10 year warranty @ 80%. Anecdata, sure, but still data.
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Old panels are continuously being replaced with new panels. This is happening now with a few year old panels. So many free old panels available, because new ones are producing 590W/panel. Over 25 years, there will be a lot more advances, panels that will be printed by textiles, or painted on surfaces, or grown by bacteria.
Wait, where are these free old panels and how do I get some?
if you are in EU: https://www.secondsol.com/en/index.htm
How big is a panel?
Very much depends on the rating. A residential panel is something like 65”x40”. A commercial sized panel is something like 80”x40”. The cell size is relatively constant, but the bigger panels are 6x12 cells instead of 6x10. Newer panels have more efficient cells, and so higher power.
Panel manufacturers can also do odder sizes as required. Example: q-cell does a 94x51” panel. This is 6x22 cells, but different sized cells as well.
Most panels are 6x, because that results in an open circuit voltage of just shy of 50V, which is convenient for code compliance.
True but there are 2 technology converges that are happening at the same time cheap energy that is getting cheaper. And automation powered by that energy that also gets cheaper as energy gets cheaper as well as efficiency gains. The current world economic systems and most government systems are unlikely to survive the upheaval that this will cause in the next 15-20 years.
> A lot of billionaires
But if you are already a billionaire, then you could stay calm? Transform your business or sell it now?
If I would be majority shareholder of lets say Exxon, even with upcoming solar I would be more relaxed than in any other job?
Seems like renewable maintenance companies will make a killing.
Solar plants don’t need much maintenance. The lack of moving parts means mostly it is just mowing the grass. The transmission infrastructure does need maintenance. Batteries have pretty low upkeep too.
That may not be a problem for a while as we're going to have to do desalination and CCS at a scale that's quite incomprehensible at the moment.
> Even the solar panel market is self defeating. Once there is enough installed power the demand will drop off sharply as the refresh cycle is too long. The feedback loop of capitalism means we are likely to reach that point sooner than you would expect.
No we won't. Even if we waved a magic wand and converted the entire planet to solar today, there would still be new installations tomorrow because energy demand is infinite. There's never enough, we've always used more energy as more energy sources were available.
That hasn’t really been true in the US in recent decades - efficiency improvements and deindustrialization were balancing increasing population. It’s recently started growing again because EVs, heat pumps, and DCs, but even a 3% increase in demand has caused a lot of growing pains.
We have a finite demand at a certain price point before running out of productive use cases.
Renewables lower the price, enabling use cases which fossil fuels were too expensive to support.
We are in for an incredibly interesting ride as we for the first time in generations lower the price floor for energy globally.
An interesting prospect is the grids getting smaller. Becoming distributed again.
Why pay the enormous maintenance cost for a continental scale grid when you can in your neighborhood have a small local grid with solar, wind and storage followed by a tiny diesel/gas turbine ensuring reliability through firming.
When deemed necessary decarbonize the firming by running it on carbon neutral fuels.
> That said, don't think I'm like the nuclear power guys of the 50s who claimed that electricity would be so abundant that we wouldn't even bother to meter it
Funny you would say that, Australia is about to have free power for all for a few hours each day. Yep, there really is that much
https://www.energy.gov.au/news/solar-sharer-offer-cut-electr...
It probably could have been true if regulations were not written that said if your nuclear power is going to be cheaper than other sources you have to spend on safety features until it's not cheaper.
Like the internet today, electricity could have been a flat monthly fee determined by your service line limit (similar to bandwidth) with limits in place for excess use.
Get solar on your roof and then just ignore their stupid rules and monopolies and corruption.
Working great for me. Friends down the road had a 16% increase in price per kWh, already locked in another 8% increase next year.