socialjust-ish:

theaustinstollhaus:

iicraft505:

theaustinstollhaus:

iicraft505:

saltybuddy:

iicraft505:

Solar and wind are probably pretty bad alternatives to fossil fuels, and nuclear has its risks (which are outweighed by the benefits and improving technology, but that aside), so geothermal and hydrolic seem like good things to look into as well. I’d think, at least.

Geothermal is a pretty minor part of the solution since it’s often inaccessible and not that beneficial . Hydraulic could be a thing? But the problem is those are not enough. Nuclear fusion (NOT fission) is the cleanest form and it gives off insane amounts of energy but it has not been mastered yet and will probably not be in the next 10 years. But I do believe it’s the future

There’s a lot of water, there’s probably a place for it somewhere.

Nuclear is probably the best bet, and the technology IS getting better. It’s just not reliable yet. We just need to master safety as well as we can and deal with the waste. Which is hard, but it’s being worked on.

Nuclear fuel will never get off the ground in the US because it produces radioactive waste, which we have no reprocessing or long-term storage for.

We have no reprocessing or long-term storage because no politician wants that crap in their state where it can poison groundwater.

Fusion is still years away from being practical. Even if it becomes cost-effective, no senator is gonna want (what they see as) another Chernobyl in their backyard.

Solar power is literally sunlight. It’s the most abundant renewable resource we have. We don’t need to bulldoze a single tree, either; we have endless tracts of Arizona wasteland we can use. Solar is the way to go.

The problem with solar is that the battery technology isn’t there. It works fine until there’s no sunlight.

Safer nuclear options are being developed, along with ways to deal with the waste. It’s decades away from large scale use, though.

Either way, people and politicians need to be convinced that it’s worth putting money into energy that doesn’t come from fossil fuels.

What do you mean the battery technology isn’t there? Electricity from solar is the same as any other electricity; it stores perfectly fine.

Also, have you ever been to Arizona?

It’s sunnier than a fucking Dark Souls cosplay down there.

I think I have at least part the answer re: battery technology. (Not the solution, but what they mean).

With current technology systems, we have an ability to deal with electrical surges/dips, which kind of happen relative to how many people are in the grid at once.

With dips, you simply increase the speed of the turbines – you can generate more power. Hydro for instance lets in more water, pushing them faster.

With surges, you just decrease the speed of the turbines, and let them ‘coast’ along with the additional energy that’s coming in.

These dips/surges aren’t a rare occurrence, they happen daily.

The problem with solar is that there’s no way to deal with dips – surges easy, just let the power essentially go to waste (have a max cap, don’t absorb more than that cap)

But with dips, you’re basically out of luck. There’s no ‘extra source’ solar can draw from to counter that. Solar on its own is consistent if energy consumption levels are predictable to the exact amount – but that’s not the case.

So the most obvious way to store solar is to use a battery system – have the solar charge into the battery, and then instead of dips needing extra power, they just siphon from the battery, and then in instances of surges the energy is just effectively funneled into the battery.

The problem with battery technology is that a battery that has a big enough storage capacity to do that for a house/office – is super expensive.

Like a Tesla is $80,000 with no extra features, and apparently $60,000 of that is just the battery. Upgrading all the old houses to incorporate that is a cost that most people probably can’t afford.

The solution that I’ve heard proposed however, is basically: Once enough people get electric cars, those act as the batteries for houses. They’re large enough cells to hold more than one house’s ‘charge’, so if you’ve got one to a block, they could effectively act as a communal storage cell. They hold the charges – and are most often plugged in at night – so surges/dips are effectively mitigated.

This would be down the line quite a ways though, like ‘it’s weirder that Steve doesn’t have an electric car than that Joe does’ down the ways. You’d need it to be consistently available to the grid.

EDIT: Just to add, I don’t think that ‘cloudy days’ neutralize the efficiency of solar panels, just lower it. If you have enough on a cloudy day they still produce energy – I think. I think the above poster was referring to nighttime, where you’d effectively need a minimum of 8 hours per household of extra charge.