Topic: Solar energy is the future. I want to save my planet!! What about you? (Read 888 times)

I think of this kind of topics more and more now. Have a quote stuck into my since since I was a kid which goes something like that: 'We haven't inherited the earth by our ancestors, we borrowed it from our children'.

My city isn't at all concerned about recycling so I separate my garbage, plastics, batteries etc. and look for a private companies to pass it on. I have a house outside of town as well and when I ran the numbers the wind turbine was better investment then solar panels. Although I guess it depends of the region too. If it is windier put the wind turbine, if it is sunnier then solar panels make more sense.

I don't think we can destroy the planet. Humans are adaptive and smart, yet so fragile. We need food, water, air, certain temperature. We could be wiped out in a blink of an eye. Maybe even more advanced civilizations were on this planet but when things go bad we will be gone first.

   The future of the planet is clear - it will die.
Solar energy may not safe our planet, but definitely may prolongate its life. Just like recycling and electric cars.
   Whatever made for saving the planet I'm voting for!

Solar energy conversion has its place, but we are becoming obsessive about it. Clearing a field of all its greenery and turning it into a solar farm may not be the most productive use of a scarce resource ( fertile land). It wold be far better to site the solar farm on desert land close to the sea, and use the solar energy to create hydrogen to transport to energy hungry cities. Hydrogen is a clean and efficent power source.

So many people seem to think they are saving the world by installing a couple of solar panels, and buying an electric car. They don't look at the total picture, and cut down trees and hedges in their gardens, pump themselves full of antibiotics and other drugs, and spray weedkiller over the barren parking lots they have created where their gardens used to be. They then use petrol leaf blowers to drive surface detritus out into the road to be washed down the public drains. They throw their litter onto the streets and into the environment, where much of it finds its way into the rivers and seas.

The governments don't help either. They introduce taxes and restrictions to suck money from consumers, and to force them to replace good efficient products with fashionable alternatives. This seems to benefit the bankers who own the manufacturing units and the resource mines, rather than the environment. For example there are massive restrictions on emissions from personal transport, but no restrictions on civil or military aviation. The burnt and unburnt fuel from air transport is pumped directly into the upper atmosphere, and there is no attempt to reduce any of the pollutants in the emissions. In fact some fuel still contains lead, which is banned in most transport fuels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlSCl-mjAYg this is the future, I also have a crazy way with mirrors and water to make what nik tesla was onto.

Well we all wants to save the planet it is our home and everyone wants to protect our home .
But we couldn't possible save it on our own we need to act together to save it .
We need to stop cutting tree's and throwing our garbage or waste in the sea.
And it is my plan when I buy my own house I would use a solar panel to save money for my electric bills.

I would love to put some solar panels on my house.  The up front cost is just really prohibitive right now though.  There used to be some really great tax incentives to get it done, but I don't think those are around as much with the new administration.  I could be wrong though.  The alternative energy source that I have been getting really excited about lately is Small Modular Nuclear Reactors.  There is a company called NuScale that is doing some amazing things. If they were publicly traded I would buy their stock in a heartbeat.  They have reactors that can be daisy chained to produced huge amounts of power.  They have a smaller footprint than traditional power plants and they are meltdown proof.  They are also working on technology to make them immune to EMP's.  I really think they can make a huge impact on the future of energy.  I reached out to the company about what happens with the "waste" after the rods are spent.  They actually got back to me with a really well worded and thought out reply.  It could all be BS, but I think they have enough credibility that I can probably believe them.  If you want me to share their response in another reply, just let me know.  Their work is so impressive that some of the regulatory commissions have fast tracked their approval process. 

I agree this is not about fixing it because it is really hard to do we should just minimize the damage,
We should do something to prevent it for being worst,Just think about what the future would be how would we live our life with just less natural resource around us being destroyed?
Tree's and plants being cut down ,Polluted water every where how could the next generation enjoy their life ?

Regarding solar energy - there is an alternative to the photovoltaics on the horizon. It's called a Stirling engine. The idea for Stirling engine is ancient; but it's use in exploitation of solar power is recent.
Couple of links for further reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar-powered_Stirling_engine
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/13/could-this-be-the-worlds-most-efficient-solar-electricity-system
https://www.spaceflightinsider.com/space-centers/glenn-research-center/it-keeps-going-and-going-stirling-engine-test-sets-long-duration-record-at-nasa-glenn/

Interesting article you have here, but the problem is those in power are too greedy to let the earth heal because they've collected and stored lots of natural resources for their own gains so they kick against total renewable energy.

Human is a danger to the earth and they will end up destroying it!!
they can't control it, the other day I was discussing with someone about Elite Mining Inc and the reason they decided to take the green initiative as a source of energy he said, he sees no reason for that, he can get power supply at cheaper rate does not matter!! I told him it matters we can solve the problems by just been a little bit kind to the earth...
check https://elitemininginc.com out
telegram:  https://t.me/EliteMiningInc

I do agree. In simple representation, humans are the cancer cells and the host is our Earth. The cancer cells slowly killing the host so if we remove the cancer cells then the host will survive and recover again. However, in reality, it's not that so easy. Of course we cannot cut the world population into half because it's immorral. So I guess the best option we can do is to act like a "less harmful cell" as much as possible and shift yourself into a white blood cell (I hope you get my point).

We all do have a point but we don't have the same opinions. We cannot convince all humans who live in this world just to agree on what's for the good/sake of saving our planet as you can see it's only on us if we keep on destroying the nature in our planet. Maybe from time to time, our nature will not be the same as what we have in the old times.

Pheww that was a very long read. All has their point , you know guys the world we lived in is destined to get damaged in due time. There is nothing we could do to stop that from happening but at least we could help slow the process of the earth from being damaged by human beings. We cannot avoid innovations, and we cannot innovate without risking the earth from all the pollution that causes by innovating .

Empty half the Earth of its humans. It's the only way to save the planet!

Just read this and I have to say you hit it just right. All those fools that believed the propaganda machines and went around babbling like idiots that we needed to all go CFL to save the planet...

They really do look stupid today, and it's because they were and are stupid.

Many other examples of primitive, unscientific thinking.

Actually, consider the 1-2 orders of magnitude improvement of modern LED lights and televisions,computers versus yesterday.

In a mild climate, you can 100% power the RV or shed with solar GIVEN THESE NEW STYLE DEVICES.

But the credit is not the solar, but the better devices. The solar is not relevant to the prime mover, the actual solution.

There's nothing hugely positive or wonderful about solar. It's just a type of powering stuff. Put it out on a job or a site and deal with it, deal with the hassles. Nothing to get excited about.

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They are a waste for the mis-directed applications they are being pushed for, by government incentives.

Without that, their actual productive uses would multiply.

Remote houses, hunting cabins, RVs, everything on islands that get lots of sun and need to bring coal/oil in for power, etc.

Nuclear power is actually statistically safer than rooftop solar panels, if you go by the amount of deaths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities

I also want to save the planet but solar energy alone is not the answer because what it is going to happen on cloudy days? no power... The solution has to be a combination of solar power and wind power and yes nuclear power too. I know that nuclear power it is  dangerous but if we as humanity are going to expand across the galaxy we need to master the nuclear energy

Shipping is $0 if you pick 'em up (they're a fairly local company from what I was told). Average Americans pay $0.10 per kwh. Technically, it really depends on area for solar energy; but throughout the year, it's 4.5 hours of sunlight in my area (for solar, data from my town's solar farm).

The numbers are there to make energy ROI worth it; even more so if you purchase the solar panels on a loan and pay it back as though you're paying a utility bill. Eventually the loan is paid off and you get a few years of free energy.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested

For anyone interested, I did some follow up with the companies offering $0.40/watt used solar panels. They aren't nearly as great of a deal as they make them out to be, but they are still better than expected.

For the 3KW of Solar panels for $1200, Shipping is $700, Mounting hardware is $1-2k, Inverters, charge controllers and such are about $800, and then whatever wiring you'd need. If you can install them yourself, you are looking at about  $3700-$4700 plus wiring. It gets more than two times more expensive if you need to hire someone to install any of it for you. If you want to tie it into the power grid, you do need someone licensed to do so, and the cost becomes prohibitive.

The solar panels you receive are around 10 years old, and provide 90% of the power they are rated for approximately, so effectively 2700 watts. At a DIY cost of, I'll split the difference and say $4300 for 2700 watts, you are at about $1.60 per watt. Each watt of solar panels will provide 1KWH of power every 1000 hours of peak operation. So, if you are paying $0.08 per KWH, you need 20 * 1,000 hours peak to hit an ROI on your solar panels. ~833 days of continuous sunlight. I think for estimates sake, 8 hours of direct sunlight per day is a slight over approximation, but we'll use it anyway. It takes about 2500 days for your panels to pay themselves off. About 7 years.

Of course, during that time the solar panels will degrade about 1% efficiency per year, winters don't provide the 8 hours of direct sun per day that we were figuring, and such, so I'd say broadly you are talking 7-10 years and the solar panels will pay themselves off at $0.40/watt. That isn't nearly as bad as the 20-30 year estimates that new solar panels try to get you with, but it still isn't fantastic. If you need to have them installed, the cost becomes prohibitive. But! If you own an RV or a Shed and want to have a little bit of backup power or something, and you have enough electrical knowhow to do it safely yourself, go for it.

I still affirm my position that solar panels are somewhat of a waste at the moment, but in theory they are a good idea, and give it some time and they'll be worthwhile. On a side note, I'd be curious what the environmental impact is for the production of the solar panels in the first place, for those that care.

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?

Solar energy will not save the planet at this point.

Consider a person drowning in a pool.  You redirect the water flow to another more efficient pool.

Will that save his life?  

If humans still want to continue to develop, it is inevitable to consume energy. Although I also think that human damage to resources is already very serious, I don’t want to go back to the primitive society and live in the cave.
Solar energy is indeed a clean energy source, but it is not yet available for large-scale applications. In most parts of the world, people cannot use solar energy efficiently.
If go to other planets colony will be a better choice？

Actually, recently, humans (homo) are around 2.5 million years old, so fuck yeah!


That's how business works; privatize the gains, socialize the losses.

What?

Now I am definitely for renewable energy and solar power, but nothing is perfect.
Oil should be cut out as soon as possible, but this will obviously not happen even though majority of people would surely agree with us.
Money is stronger then democracy, it is those that have money that have biggest votes.

I haven't really read your entire post, I am too lazy for that, but from what I read I see you have a problem with waste of food and etc.
I just want to point out that this is easy to complain about when you imagine the World as one small connected place, but the truth is, World is so big that it is easier to make new food then to transport it, sometimes. And easier means less wasteful, most of the time.

Solar energy isn't perfect, it is better, but it still takes away light from trees, plants and the rest of the ecosystem.
Also we aren't really destroying the planet, this planet went through a lot worse on it's own and all of this carbon we are releasing through burning oil came from the atmosphere in the first place, trapped by plant life that decayed over millions of years into coal and oil.
We are simply changing the planet with a bigger pace then it changed on it's own, which is not that bad for the planet, as it is bad for the creatures on top of the food chain (humans,...). Plants will be just fine when be burn all the oil, we wouldn't, some of our cities would be underwater for start.

So the point here is not that we are hurting the planet as much as we are hurting ourselves with greed.
I don't think anybody will make a rebellion over this, since some small portion of this short term benefit sprinkles over to us.
If we see it though, in another perspective, as big greedy players profiting more over something we all pay for equally, then that is another thing entirely.

You see, we should demand our share, profit from oil companies should be shared equally and directly to every human being on this planet, since all of us are paying for it in the end equally, by living in a less human-hospitable World afterwards.

Now when we all get our share, perhaps then we all equally agree that the profit from it isn't worth it, but the first action would be to take away all the power from oil companies and shut it down for the private sector if the share in the company isn't shared equally along every human in the World.
Individuals simply can't profit for something that we will all suffer in the end equally.

Friends want to share with you a very interesting and at the time frightening information! Please read to the end, and even better let me read it to all my friends.

People live on earth according to the calculations of only 200 thousand years and all until the 19th century was moving on until humanity found oil and gas. Over the next two centuries, and to be precise over the past 50 years, we have so destroyed the balance of nature that even scary to imagine it.
Over the past 100 years, the population of the planet has increased more than 3 times. Today, 15% of the population consumes 85% of the earth's natural resources.
Agriculture today produces twice as much food than is necessary to feed the entire population of the planet, but the world is still hungry whiter than 2 billion people.
Trees-the main source of oxygen on the earth give way to cattle farms and farms, and on the cut down and dried-up sites waste grounds are formed. Every year more than 13 million hectares of forest disappear from the face of the earth. 60% of grain goes to feed livestock and poultry, which are subsequently slaughtered and go to the shelves in the form of meat, which is not eaten in half of the cases.
Cotton production exceeds the demand of the entire population of the planet and exists through subsidies in developed countries and slave labor with the rest of the world. Most of Africa and Asia work in slave labour to feed themselves and their children.
To grow flowers requires a huge amount of energy, pesticides and fertilizers.  80% of the grown flowers are in the garbage! For what?
The modern trade world requires drainage of rivers, deforestation and environmental pollution. More than 90% of scientific discoveries serve war and trade. Physically, the best minds on the planet are busy destroying nature and it's scary!
The modern world of consumption has become a cancer of the planet and according to experts by 2030, due to global warming, the polar cap of Antarctica may completely disappear. It has declined by 40% in the last 40 years alone.
Every year, lake Baikal (the largest and cleanest lake of fresh water) discharges more than 35 million cubic meters of wastewater per year. At present, the air on the peaks of the Himalayan range is as polluted as in our cities. The state of our planet can be told endlessly, but no one thinks about it.
What can we do to preserve the beauty of our home and preserve our planet???
You think it's too late, but I'm sure it isn't!! Together, we can rebuild our home and start over. Today there are already examples of progress for the better, for example:
- The state took under its protection 2% of land worldwide is not much, but it's good.
- the number of reserves has increased;
- New Yorkers have realized the scale of nature and now forests and trees supply them with drinking water.
- In South Korea, almost all forests were destroyed during the war, but today there is an active restoration and forests occupy 60% of the country's territory.
- Costa Rica has made a choice in favor of resources and almost completely abandoned the army spending the money on the restoration of nature.
- Gabon - leading production forests, but the forests are not depleted because cut down only 1 tree with 1 hectare.
In Freiburg-built a neighborhood that is completely innovative and does not harm nature. Life there is carried out with the help of solar panels.
- Many States consider the development of renewable energy sources as a priority.
- In Denmark, they built a power plant running on coal and emitting carbon dioxide into the soil, and on the coast in Denmark there are wind farms producing 20% of the country's electricity!!!  Iceland has a power plant that converts the internal heat of the earth into electrical energy.

- In the deserts began to convert solar energy into electricity and it's great, because for 1 hour the sun gives energy to the Earth in such an amount as we consume for the whole year!!!

All we have to do is stop drilling the earth and learn how to process solar energy, let's rebuild our planet together. What ways do you see to restore our planet?