pinkfootthegoose

pinkfootthegoose t1_jde7h0o wrote

green idiots did not kill nuclear. They were a convenient whipping boy to blame for the poor economics of nuclear power.

There has never been a profitable commercial nuclear plant. not one.

Nuclear plants were constructed to build nuclear weapons with a side benefit of making power to subsidize the production of plutonium.

Also nuclear plants can not be built fast enough to satisfy demand.

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pinkfootthegoose t1_ja3x5ol wrote

to put things into prospective think of this. The world makes around 78 million vehicles per year. Think of how much materiel goes into each vehicle. what if I told you that if you parked each vehicle side by side in a huge parking lot it would cover roughly the same area as the needed solar panels? We do it every single year with cars.

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pinkfootthegoose t1_ja1olke wrote

of course it's converted to AC.. you need to do that to use it in your house anyway.

Well DC is only used for HVDC lines as far as I know, at least day to day for most people.

people without batteries rely on net metering. They use to solar panels during the day to either reduce the amount of power they get from the power company or they even produce a surplus during the day and send some back up the line for local distribution. This reduces their power bill but they still rely power company for power since for safety reason they have the aforementioned power cut off so line workers aren't zapped. So no you generally can't use your panels if you are grid connected with no batteries though in theory you would just manually disconnect from the grid and power the house during the day depending on how much you generate and how much you need.

For those with a battery but are connected to the grid it's a bit different. They of course use the panels to power their house but also charge up batteries for later use and once the batteries are full send power back to the grid. They of course use the batteries at night or during inclement weathers when there isn't much sun. If the power from the grid goes out they can instantly switch to solar, battery or a combinations of the two depending on the circumstances.

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pinkfootthegoose t1_ja1lwn5 wrote

that's a square about 438 miles per side.

While that is a huge area I suspect that solar panel manufactures make a non trivial impact towards that amount each year.

renewables (sun, wind, water, geothermal) are projected to overtake coal world wide as the most common source of power in 2025 if not a bit sooner. (the war in Ukraine has accelerated adoption of renewables)

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pinkfootthegoose t1_ja1k6g8 wrote

you don't need lithium batteries for batteries that stay in place since their weight would be irrelevant. You can use materials more conducive for the application either commercial or home use.

Also we already have a distributed grid... our current (pun) one.

Also there is already regulation in place for power cut offs for power generation feed back and is not that expensive.

Industry is very aware of the need to move away from lithium ion for in place electricity storage and is spending billions on research with some alternatives already being built.

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