Everything pertaining to the technological singularity and related topics, e.g. AI, human enhancement, etc.
Engineering
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![r/shittyfoodporn - [i ate] Meatballs](https://a.thumbs.redditmedia.com/qYZhV8-V8aOA7sIEwEAOhLVw_hp-8nE_QW4ZOFY-lf4.jpg)
who else is here because they misread the title as "IKEA"?
"Ve vill power ze vorld vis swedish meatball!"
svedish
Not if companies start diverting energy to AI :)
I imagine the usual suspects will be very upset about this news, you can modify the meme in your head.
This is a bizarre fictitious strawman that isn't representative of reality. I follow lots of "climate twitter" accounts and there are 0 people upset by the news that solar is getting cheaper. It's like daily celebrations at how much solar is being rolled onto CAISO and ERCOT right now. If you thought this meme was accurate you need to check your priors and the information bubble you exist in.
There is a real, celebrated, mainstream, perspective in the environmentalist movement that technology or markets cannot be a solution to climate change, and the only real solution is degrowth.
Nobody will cop directly to being "upset that solar is cheaper", because that sounds transparently evil, but there are people that genuinely believe the only solution is to radically transform the economy, rather than look at plausible, incremental solutions like geo-engineering, technological improvement, economies of scale, etc.
No u.
You cherry pick one single degrowth loon as if she's representative? How dishonest. Go and read r/climate, go to climate twitter, go to r/renewableenergy, search "solar", actually listen to the conversations happening about this right now among thousands of people. It is overwhelmingly positive towards solar and battery costs coming down and installations ramping up.
She's representative of.. "the usual suspects [that] will be very upset about this news", I referred to in my glib, one-line response of a comic that depicts a single person being angry about there being tangible solutions to climate change? I dunno how I could get any more "honest" and still make it a joke, but I kinda figured finding a video of a person unironically making the exact point of the comic would be enough.
I didn't say they were representative of a majority of people or anything, just pointing out that this information runs contrary to a very popular narrative that technological improvements are not a solution to large, seemingly intractable, coordination problems.
In any case, it's obviously a good thing that PV continues to extend its exponential reduction in cost and increase in efficiency, as it continues to make solar more and more economical for grid-scale power generation. Hopefully the same holds true of carbon capture and sequestration technologies, batteries, etc.
Nah, I've definitely seen arguments by degrowth people criticizing the environmental impacts of rare earth mineral mining and suggesting that degrowth is the only viable option
I don't think they're really the same group as the climate change crowd, on average they tend to be more focused on trying to recreate the USSR (not just hand-wavy communism, literal Stalin supporters). It's not common, which is a good thing, but they are legitimately out there
I imagine you just haven't seen them because your information bubble
That is such a good and relevant meme.
And if you go in the comments, they talk about how we will need to scale the labor a lot to match this production capabilities. And yet that sub is so rabidly anti-AI lol, which will be huge in physical labor in a decade or a few.
Wow
can we not spread this so old company boomers who control oil,gas,coal and so on dont blocks this with thier money ? pls ?
i am an old company boomer who controls oil,gas,coal and so on and I was browsing google search with the key word "spreading" (don't ask why) and luckily i stumbled on this post comment. now I will use my money as ammunition in my custom built rail gun to destroy every single solar cell manufacturing center in the world. muahahahaha.
IEA are literally the old company boomers who control oil and gas. This is them saying: "Please don't invest more in solar, everything is already fine."
While solar energy has emerged as a prominent renewable energy source, its long-term sustainability is not without limitations. Solar panels, despite their efficacy in harnessing solar radiation, are constrained by several inherent limitations. Firstly, their efficiency is contingent upon sunlight availability, rendering them less reliable in regions with frequent cloud cover or limited daylight hours. Additionally, the production of solar panels entails significant resource consumption and environmental impact, including the extraction and processing of rare earth minerals. Moreover, solar panels have a finite lifespan and require periodic maintenance and replacement, further exacerbating their environmental footprint. In contrast, biogas and hydrogen present compelling alternatives poised to redefine the future of sustainable energy. Biogas, derived from organic waste through anaerobic digestion, offers a renewable and versatile energy source while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Similarly, hydrogen, produced through electrolysis or reforming processes, holds promise as a clean and abundant energy carrier with diverse applications in transportation, industry, and power generation. These renewable energy alternatives not only circumvent the limitations of solar energy but also offer scalability, reliability, and environmental sustainability, thereby heralding a paradigm shift towards a more resilient and sustainable energy future.
Only people who can afford solar are like the upper middle class and above.
The subsidies will also be gone by the time the poors can afford to buy solar.
Solar panels and batteries are really cheap now the only thing that's still expensive is installation.
Hmmm, batteries are pretty decent now, i agree on that.
But they still have obvious downsides that drasrically lowers the efficiency of their use cases.
For electric cars, they are still pretty expensive and heavy. They can be slightly lighter, but then they are even more expensive.
For homes, the amount of power they have to store in relation to their price cause them to still increase the amount of time needed for a net ROI by a significant amount.
I did some calculations a while ago on buying bulk LiFePO4 cells and programming a control system to monitor electrical prices to buy when it was cheap early in the morning and sell during common peak hours. And even if i would do all the programming and installation myself (which i will be licenced for soon), the time for reaching ROI was still many years. Although, it was still tempting as it also could serve as a stable power storage in case the grid becomes unstable or shuts down.
A 5kwh battery is only £1,000 now, they were about 5 times as expensive a year ago. My annual electricity bill is more than that. 400 w panels are only £60 each. You could get a return on your investment in 2 to 3 years if you installed it yourself and have free power after that
Yeah you are right, prices have dropped drastically since last i looked. I had completely missed that.
If you order LiFePO4 cells from alibaba, you can push that price down to about $70/kWh, plus shipping. So $350 for 5kWh.
I really should get that energy storage venture going. With these prices, i could make the investment back in approximately a year or two tops, and after that, at least 25% yearly ROI (om purely the batteries) by really conservative estimates. Very, very roughly calculated though.
Time to dust off Visual Studio for some precarious Nordpool webscraping and statistics.
batteries are completely worthless for grid storage at their current energy density. we need at least a 15-20x improvement for them to be anywhere close to competitive. when your EV can go 5000 miles on a single charge is about when grid storage will be a legitimate option.
Batteries alone will not do for complete decarbonization of economy. But for residential energy storage in a single- or few-families homes they are mostly OK (if your winters aren't that cold or grid energy supply is reliable).
Most homes here in the UK only use about 10kw/day. A 10kw battery isn't that big, it's also not too expensive now, you can get one for about £2000 which is cheap considering annual electricity bills here are over £1000/year.
can poor people afford coal power plants or nuclear power stations?
If you have a house you should be easily able to finance it. There are even companies which rent your roof for solar without extra cost(worse in the long run of course).
Renewables are the cheapest source of power without even without subsidies.
Individuals are largely not the ones buying solar, so I don’t understand their relevance to the discussion? Power companies are the ones largely buying solar.
can we not spread this so old company boomers who control oil,gas,coal and so on dont blocks this with thier money ? pls ?
Do we have the batteries to store this energy? No. Do we have the infrastructure to transmit this energy where its needed? No. Do we have the ecosytem of factories, vehicles, machines and tools to USE this electricity No.
We have some horses. We do not have the carts, reigns, cart drivers, horse tenders, stables or the horseshoes.