Comment by Moldoteck
9 hours ago
it's winning regardless - every kwh of solar is a kwh less of fossils. You can achieve even deeper decarbonization with nuclear but the perfect shouldnt be the enemy of good. There are countries where nuclear is politically hard and changing ppl's opinions is hard too. So it's either ren+ some fossil firming or just fossils
Another advantage of solar that it is decentralized and difficult/too costly to shut off by a country bombing you (Ukraine benefits from this) (unlike a big centralized power plant).
I think the biggest potential is in the 3rd world countries for which hydrocarbon import is a big drain on their convertible monetary reserves (especially now with the rising oil prices).
A farmer with enough free land and significant diesel bills for his farm machinery would also benefit from having his own solar farm and electric machinery.
Two future developments might be especially useful: 1) extremely cheap (sodium?) batteries (not necessarily ultra compact/light per kwh, just cheap). Moving in that direction but significant price reduction is still needed.
2) an ultra-cheap PV foil you can just roll out and not care too much about the longevity (not sure how feasible, but would be awesome and really handy in many situations)
full decentralization is not a feature but a bug imo - you spend a lot on transmission. Germany now spends 10x more than france on transmission and curtailment and has highest prices in EU. It's the best to have a hybrid - centralized pp and centralized solar/wind parks but distributed evenly across country. Ukraine had also massive loss of ren power because most solar+wind was in south (because of better weather) and destroyed by russia or captured.
Electric machinery is good but crazy expensive, esp in farming sector. Eastern EU still buys bellorusian tractors because of their price...
PV is already sufficiently cheap, the problem is new units start competing with existing units so gains are getting smaller unless you have lots of hydro or bess
Agree about huge sums being spent on fossils, it's a strong grip and getting off isnt cheap either becaus of necessary grid upgrades
You are looking at it from the point of view of 1st world country that has a functioning highly centralized generation and distribution system.
My view is more from the 3rd world country where the generation and distribution is insufficient and unreliable.
To goal is to have local generation closely tied to local production, greatly alleviating the need for global long-distance transmission. Yes, it does not work as well as well functioning global system, but that is not the reality of the 3rd world. And can be achieved much cheaper/simpler than a well-working global system.
Sort of like Africa leapfrogging land lines and going directly to cell phones.
Electric machinary does not have to be crazy expensive. As electric cars do not need to be crazy expensive, that is the market the west is willingly leaving to China/rest of the world. (Just go to China/Asia and see cheap electric cars. For locals, the electric is the cheapest option.)
Re: PV is already sufficiently cheap: For 1st world, and for the current applications. Bringing the battery costs down would enable much wider use of solar.
Last year I have been to remote parts of Indonesia. Almost all local transport was by small boats, with japanese ICE engines. The availability (logistics of getting the fuel to small remote islands) and cost of fuel were quite limiting. If each village/homestead had their PV farm for charging their boats, their life would be transformed.
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