Topic: Solar energy is the future. I want to save my planet!! What about you? - page 2. (Read 803 times)

solar power is a good way to introduce more efficient energy ,yes
to save the planet you will need to change more than the means of energy acquisition
doesn't matter if you have the cheapest and the cleanest energy if only a few "elite" can use it
Tesla discovered a source of energy that is, supposedly, kept secret for decades
you should look not for the ways to improve the technosphere, but change the way people think and the way societies are

https://what-if.xkcd.com/8/

Highlights the issue of super dense areas.

Overall, climate change is caused by humans; look at the radical change in the last 100 years as opposed to the previous 10000 years. Earth doesn't have a radical history of change; but slow gradual change.

ppl talking about "save the planet"...we are not even close to understanding the planet yet...and we cant even save ourselves from the stupid shit that we do every day...the mathematical fact is, every living human being on the earth could stand in the city of los angeles....rest of the world totally empty...my point? we are not as important as some may think..."But the level of CO2 is going up!"...the relative atmospheric concentration of gases has been in constant flux for, oh....ever!!...why must we believe for a minute that it has to remain static at pre-industrial level for the rest of time...the only constant is change..."But CO2!!"...here's an idea, forget about the century that we spent getting mercury out of the hands of children....lets make cfl's cuz we believe they may reduce CO2 emissions...oh ya, and possibly because jeffrey immelt had the ear of the lawmakers for years...sooner or later we all have to come to grips w/ the 2nd law of thermodynamics (or some form thereof)...making the tesla, the solar panel, etc, etc is, in the long run, going to make just as big a mess (if not bigger) than doing it the old fashioned way...only difference being, you dont see the mess...it ends up in some river in china or africa

i wouldnt say all but i do agree most. just look at the core of btc creation...pow

@Bluefire, Would you mind sharing your source? I can't find them on the MLSolar site. For $0.20-$0.30 / watt I'd absolutely buy some now. I'm certain that there would be additional charges or unfavorable terms involved, but I'd like to see what those are. $0.20-$0.30/watt is cheaper than I can make them myself, and I'd hope they wouldn't be as shoddy as mine.


Where we live isn't collapsing, its just becoming unfavorable for humans, and regrettably other species. The earth will be fine if water levels rise, or if it gets hotter/colder. It'll just suck for us. Everything is reversible, its just a matter of effort. Maybe it'd take X dollars and Y years to completely reverse the damage we've done so far. If we decide to start acting 50 years from now, it could take a million times more effort, but it'd still be achievable. From an efficiency standpoint it'd make the most sense to begin now, but we don't really operate on what makes the most sense.

Yes. Let's use POS instead of POW and let's hire a bunch of beautiful fairies with big beautiful butterfly wings to distribute the coins so that everyone becomes rich. We do not need mining problems to hand out coins because we have fairies.

Solar energy is one of the few topics covered in my post, but it is basic.
Additionally, I would like to convey to people that the world in which we live is collapsing and the reason for that - man! Let us together be at least a little smarter and promote our ideas for a better world.
I know everyone has them but not everyone is ready to make their dreams come true. I am for everyone to have a chance and opportunity to do useful for the future and for our home!

i agree but pow is causing more damage and will lead the world in energy consumption in a couple years. btc better work on a better way and move away from pow

I bet there is fine print somewhere saying "after tax credits".

I've done the feasibility study of using solar panels here in Florida. It does not look very attractive. My calculations showed that where we live, there is no real cost savings. Also, when you have money tied up in the solar panel assembly. If you do it, it's because of ideological reasons, not economic. I do like the solar shingles that Musk is working on. I think that will be disruptive. Hopefully, all new homeowners will install them.

While looking for "real" info on the costs of solar panels I found that most of the results on solar power are biased towards solar energy use. Look up "solar energy myths" in google. All of the results are from solar energy special interests. There are quite a few "myth busters" in favor of solar. One common arguement is the fact that solar panels are designed to be used for 30 years. The return on investments is super long. I highly doubt it. There are so many things that could go wrong.

https://southerncurrentllc.com/top-solar-energy-myths-debunked/

Electric vehicles IMO are the exception. There are substantial savings there.

I just stop water when brushing my teeth.

Your date's wrong on the published date of that article. Originally published in 2016 at the latest, modified 2018.

The comments are from 2016.





When a random blog says these numbers should be $3-4 per watt, and I'm seeing actual wholesalers selling for $0.20-$0.50; someone's gotta be lying.

The last time I had planned on purchasing solar panels, commercially available, they were 17-20% efficient. Now, maybe 6 years later, they are more or less the same, though the price has decreased. $0.40/watt is absolutely a good price, there are a lot of additional costs that go along with solar setups, but I won't disagree, that under $1/watt is pretty nice. I'm not sure if you've looked into getting them yourself, I was considering purchasing solar panels, and was quoted around $70,000 for 5 KW from two or three companies after inverters, charge controllers, and installation. I have quite literally built a (small) nuclear reactors for less than that. Of course I now build solar panels myself for a fraction of that cost, but mostly for low power applications as I don't have a square meter of space to place solar panels.

Passive power is nice, but I do not think professionally installed solar panels are even slightly worth it at the moment. The projected, "These will pay themselves off in 20 years!" mentality doesn't factor in depreciation, degradation of their efficiency,  the chance that a limb is going to fall and break them, and the amount of pissed off you'll be in 3 years when the same system costs half what it does now. Building your own isn't the most cost efficient either, but sometimes its nice for convenience sake. Though its also illegal to tie them into the grid, so I can only use mine for pranks and off site small machinery. 200 Watts, even 1 KW is a toy in my opinion. Consider what miners are using for electricity. If a $2,000 mining rig draws 4 KW of power, they'd need $20,000 worth of solar panels to offset it anyway.

Again, my point isn't to stop solar research or to call it pointless, in my opinion its just pointless at the moment. Many clean energies are produced for under 1 cent per kilowatt hour. Solar just can't compete with that for the time being. When we see $1/Watt installed, at 50% efficiency, I'll reevaluate.

Article published November 15th, 2018:

https://www.solarpowerauthority.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-install-solar-on-an-average-us-house/

Solar panels are the greatest they ever have been, not "just as the moment". It's not an instantaneous improvement, but it's still improvement each year. They will only get better with time, but they require the investment to make worthy. Maybe once these ones break, we'll have 50% efficient panels and replace them with 500 watt models / sq meter instead of 200 watt, like 30 years from now.

I guess you could argue with the trade war, it would be a bad time to buy, but I see constant deals on them less than $0.40 / watt (monocrystalline) and think "jesus, that's only like a couple years to offset my electricity bill", then I realize most of the cost is labor and converters (which is kinda dumb, because I run mostly DC heavy items... so... maybe I should just eliminate the step to AC back to DC). However; I digress.


There's a certain advantage to solar over coal. Once you set them, you can forget them. Coal you need someone loading up the hopper and mining... ya know, the coal.

The idea that solar panels are a toy is kinda silly. They're quite powerful and large installations are becoming more cost effective than other means of energy generation.

Solar panels aren't great at the moment. I like the concept, but they are too inefficient to be worth the time and cost. I build my own solar panels, but its more for convenience of not having to tie into the grid, rather than any sort of cost savings. Given ideal situations, the intensity from the sun is around 800-1000 watts/m^2 at the surface of the earth. At 20% efficiency, you are getting under 200 watts of power for every square meter of solar panels, and thats also only during the day, and if you have the panels tracking the sun. I wouldn't say 200 watts is anything to sneeze at, but a square meter is also a lot of space. If they were more efficient, I'd be more likely to advocate their use, but they are really just a toy at the moment. I would say hydroelectric is probably the most useful, however that relies on having a river. Nuclear is my favorite form of power, but the initial investment required is high. Windmills are neat as well. I don't know very much about them, but I can't imagine they are cheap either.

I'm surprised that geothermal and tidal power haven't caught on as much as I thought they would. Geothermal is expensive for sure, but its really reliable and doesn't require much maintenance. Tidal I guess might be hard to service? But tides ripping have a tremendous amount of power. Lets get some space tethers going!

I'm not anti solar panel, I'm pro, lets do more solar panel research and advancement before bothering to install them, so we don't need to "upgrade" them as frequently as people upgrade their phones.

Why minimize the effects when we can prevent it? Yes at this point in our lives it will be very hard for people to adjust to what we were used to but unless we change our habits that hurt the environment, adjust our lifestyle then we might as well just pack our emergency bags and prepare for the worst.

The best way to save the planet is to sell all of your bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies since the cryptocurrency community is completely irresponsible and environmentally destructive.

It's not about fixing what has already been destroyed and what will be destroyed regardless at this point, but about minimizing the losses.

We should do whatever is in our best ability to slow down global warming and limit it's impact on the ecosystem.

Living in a cave won't help; we've already entered the positive feedback loop! wooo!

There's plenty of large scale solar installations around the world.


If you drain the entire pool before they start drowning, they'll probably be fine.

I fail to see the analogy. You mean that is already too late?