The Chinese are kicking ass with solar.



Also kicking ass with affordable EVs.

The Chinese will be able to make Toast!   

At the same time, they are also the country still burning the most coal.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/whos-building-the-most-solar-energy/

Who's Building the Most Solar Energy?

RE

Globally speaking, this is pretty decent progress on the non-transportation related electrical power generation front.  It is however somewhat misleading since despite generating a greater percentage of power with renewables, in absolute terms power consumption is rising so fast that more FFs are getting burned anyhow.  Besides that, this is even BEFORE all the AI and Data Centers being planned are built out.

it also doesn't account for the switchover to electric heating which has begun in the FSoA, but not so much elsewhere in the world.  As the FFs diminish in availability and/or rise in price, electricity from renewables is pretty much all these other countries will have for that purpose, so they really have no choice.

Most importantly, electricity only accounts for portion of total uses of FFs to keep our Industrial Civilization perking along , most of it is NG or coal and not oil and the FSoA of course gobbles up most of it..



Here's how it breaks down by sector for the FSoA



So you're really just talking a smsll percentage of a medium percentage of the electricity generated globally moving to renewables, and really not until you make a significant dent into the transportation sector are you meaningfully addressing the cultural dependence on FFs.

So, it really does come down to how fast a transition to battery electric, hydrogen fuel cell, ICE Hydrogen and ICE Biofuels (ethanol, biodiesel, wood gas, methane digester) can be effected to see how many total people wil die before the situation stabilizes.

Prior to the last couple of weeks reading about the various renewable projects being built around the world along with the various relatively low tech LDES systems that are being developed, my general feeling was we were doomed to a 99% or more Dieoff of the population of Homo Saps before we might stabilize at <100M remaining.  Now I think it's at least plausible it could be as much as 10% left, so 800M.

Of course, there's still a whole lot of reasons it can be much worse, famine and disease being the main ones which will exact a big death toll once dieoff begins to accelerate and the medical system is overwhelmed.  But nevertheless, I have a little more hopium this week. 

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/7/24151375/renewable-energy-global-electricity-report-us-gas

The US is propping up gas while the world moves to renewable energy

RE

Unfortunately this is a paywall article, but I just wanted to use this to make a point about Dirigibles (like the Hindenburgh).

If we had big ones like that, besides using them for low energy air travel for people, they would be perfect for delivering freight that is too big to transport on the roads.  I remember passing by wind turbine blades being transported back in the early 2000s which hung off the back end of a 53' flatbed trailer by another 50', and i wondered how they could make the turn radius on the interstate on ramps, which are designed for the longest possible vehicles.  All other roads are even worse, down of course to narrow streets and alleys in places like Chinatown in NYC where even getting a 40' dry box to round a corner is a major adventure in driving.

With a dirigible, you could deliver one of the new 100 meter football field size turbine blades to be mounted onto the Empire State Building to power the data servers down on Wall Street.  Can you imagine the NYC skyline with huge windmills on all the tallest skyscrapers?  Of course, the noise level would be pretty high so you'd have to walk around wearing noise-cancelling headphones, but you pretty much have to do that anyway.  It also might be the Final Solution to the pigeon problem in the Big Apple. lol.

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/05/08/wind-turbines-keep-getting-bigger

Wind turbines keep getting bigger

RE

Next to putting panels on top of aqueducts where they serve a dual function by lowering the amount of water lost due to evaporation, deserts seem like the best location for solar farms since they're not good for people OR wildlife.  Plenty of sun also, but since they're so remote usually you have to get the power to where the people are.

Since there is also no water around, you can't build a hydrolysis plant for making H on location either, so you're going to have to build also at least one transformer station and a high voltage line to either connect it up to the grid or bring the juice to a hydrolysis plant built next to a large water supply, like the ocean preferably.  Then an H liquification plant and port capable of handling large liquid H supertankers.  Overall, a very expensive infrastructure project.

The big complaint this author has is about the possible negative climate effects because solar panels are black and don't reflect off light as well as sand, so you lose the albedo effect.  The panels get hotter than sand, and that heat will be transferred to the surrounding atmosphere.  If it's a big enough area of land, this could have significant effect on the weather patterns, rainfall etc.  That could be very bad.

My question is, do solar PV panels HAVE to be dark colored?  The photovoltaic effect doesn't require heat, the photons act directly to excite electrons and raise their potential energy (measured in Volts).  In principle, I think they could be any color at all, but the material itself has to be white in color, not painted white.  I don't know if you can make lighter colored PV panels or not.  I've never seen them any color but black.  If it's possible but none so far have been developed, that is something that could make an enterprising materials chemist a fucking gazillionaire.  Get the patent on that and you'll br richer than Musk, Bezos and Gates combined. lol.

Even not covering desert, just over regular land, the additional heat that panels produce may have an effect on climate if a significant amount of the earth surface is covered with them.  We already know that the blacktop of roads has an effect.

Anyhow, there's always risk of unintended consequences with any alternative energy.  The guys drilling in Iceland into magma chambers could set off a supervolcano.  Big windmills kill flocks of migrating birds.  Dams block salmon swimming upstream to spawn.  Nukes produce radioactive waste that takes 1000s of years to decay.  As long as there are billions of homo saps using lots of energy every day, we're going to have negative consequences.  The only real way to solve that is with less people using less energy.  Nobody wants that though.

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/solar-panels-sahara-covered/1878/

Covering the biggest sand desert with solar panels: 173 TWh and the biggest mistake in human history

RE

This is a pretty practical idea.  In combination with Hydrogen to gey you in and out of port, use the Trade Winds the way they did in the old days to make the long transoceanic passages.



While this works for tankers, not so sure about container ships.  They are piled up oon the deck higher than the boom of those sails.




https://www.businessinsider.com/sc/a-new-sail-design-is-pushing-the-maritime-industry-to-sustainability

A new sail design for cargo ships is propelling the maritime industry to a more sustainable future

RE

As we have discussed, generating Solar power is only part of the problem with converting to renewables, even in the electric power sector.  The transportation sector has even greater problems, but the Chinese are already up against the Grid and Storage bottleneck.

Given the fact the Chinese are producing EVs that people can actually AFFORD, all those EVs need to be charged up daily.  Which means the grid has to be able to support the additional load, since they don't pass out a free standing solar charging station for each car, they have big solar farms to tie into grid power.  Same model as over here, because centralizing power production is how they charge for it.  If everybody had their own setup, no revenue.

So now they have surplus panels which they would like to dump on the west, which would be a real boon for Doomsteaders since they would be able to get them at rock-bottom prices.  That can't be allowed of course, since besides not wanting people to be able to produce their own power, it would put local manufacturers of PV panels outta biz.  In a real Free Market capitalist system, that's what should happen.  But of course it's not a free market, so they'll slap on big tariffs to protect the local manufacturers, just like with the EVs.

The Chinese for their part have to turn their productive focus from the panels to Green Hydrogen production.  They can use this both for Storage and to bring down the cost of H to use as a transportation fuel.  Upgrading their grid to handle the increasing loads is as big or bigger a problem there as it is here.

Ideally in both places is that community level micro-grids powered by solar-wind should be built backed up by Green Hydrogen production for LDES and transportation fuel.  Again however, that is against the centralized model and monopolization of the Means of Production capitalists are so fond of.

In theory, if all this was done properly, people would have practically free power all the time, just the cost of maintenance and replacement of worn out parts.  Unlikely to happen either in China or here, though in China it stands a better chance.

https://www.businessinsider.com/china-solar-panel-supply-overcapacity-power-grid-demand-support-energy-2024-5

China made so many solar panels that even its own grid can't support all the energy produced

RE

Very novel design.  I wonder how much one of the 5Kw units costs?

A pdf with the specs and diagrams is available as well.  It looks like something a handy DIY Domer could build himself.

https://26011849.fs1.hubspotusercontent-eu1.net/hubfs/26011849/Aeromine%20Website/downloads/Aeromine%20cut%20sheet%20231004.pdf


Bladeless wind energy innovation aims to compete with rooftop solar

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/05/24/bladeless-wind-energy-innovation-aims-to-compete-with-rooftop-solar/

RE

QuoteIn theory, if all this was done properly, people would have practically free power all the time, just the cost of maintenance and replacement of worn out parts.  Unlikely to happen either in China or here, though in China it stands a better chance.

Your free power all the time would do no good because all the networks which dissipate fossil fuels still dissipate fossil fuels.  Free power all the time will dissipate all the stuff in the earth's crust as fast as matter can move.

Free power all the time is a highway to doom.  And no stroad with a yellow line down the center of it.  Free power all the time is multi-lane freeway with eighty mile an hour curves.  It's foot thick smooth concrete, and all one way on a sunny day.  No limits, go as fast as you can.  Fun fun fun on the autobahn.  Stop at the Diner and have some cherry pie.  The coffee is good.

Free Power uses all the stuff in the crust before the third rock goes around the sun ten times.  A lot of cherry pie in that crust.   Enough to make you sick.  Free energy without a brain is a curse.


As society has no brain.  Enjoy.

Agreed, like all the rest of the bacteria, insect and animal kingdoms, Homo Saps will keep eating and growing exponentially until they consume everything in their path.  Like ecoli in a Petri dish, locusts every 7 years or the reindeer on St. Matthews island.



RE

Another Sail design for shipping, on a cargo vessel.  14% reduction in emissions which is better than nothing, but in the photo there are no containers on the deck.  On a fully loaded ship, the containers would block the wing halfway up the vertical wings.  Plus, you're losing about 25-30% of the deck space to stack containers.  Not convinced yet with this solution.



https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/wind-power-shipping-pollution-cargo-ship-sails/

Winged cargo ship with revolutionary tech features completes impressive trial at sea: 'It's an exciting time'

RE