Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Ben Brockert (wikkit@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 20:48:14 JST Ben Brockert

   Really interesting doc on the state of the photovoltaic industry. The time for a system installed in southern Europe to pay back the amount of energy that was used to create it is now only one year. Most of the US is sunnier than southern Europe.

   Also there were advances in higher efficiency monocrystalline panels and their market share massive spiked since 2016, from a quarter to almost all of the market.

   >75% of recent installs in Germany also have batteries.

   https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/photovoltaics-report.html

   • Embed this notice
     Ben Brockert (wikkit@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 20:48:13 JST Ben Brockert

     in reply to

     "in the first quarter of 2023, when researchers used satellite imagery to count all of the solar installations in the country, they estimated that solar was producing a combined 5,700 megawatts of energy—only 55 percent of which had been declared to the government."

     Illicit solarpunk is the new illicit swimming pool.

     https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/10/solar-power-energy-revolution-global-south/680351/

     (the swimming pool story: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/08/france-reveals-hidden-swimming-pools-with-ai-taxes-them/ )

     pettter repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Ben Brockert (wikkit@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 20:48:13 JST Ben Brockert

     in reply to

     I was curious if panels are cheap enough now to mount them facing east and west, to generate more power in the morning and evening when fix sky-facing panels are tapering, but it turns out it is not necessary. You get a solar panel that generates from either side (bifacial) and mount it vertically as a fence running north to south.

     I could see these being used as permanent snow fences down the western edges of north-south highways in the Midwest.

     https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bifacial_solar_cells

   • Embed this notice
     Ben Brockert (wikkit@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 20:48:14 JST Ben Brockert

     in reply to

     Solar was almost 80% of new generating capacity installed in the first 2/3rds of 2024 in the US, and that doesn't count any of the small-scale solar.

     1 GW of nuclear came online after 18 years of work, while 16.5 GW of solar came online, with presumably less lead time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant#Units_3_and_4

     Federal Energy Regulatory Commission - "Energy Infrastructure Update for August 2024"
     https://cms.ferc.gov/media/energy-infrastructure-update-august-2024