Climate Change: The Megathread - Read Post #1 before posting

I find it equally depressing the schilling solar gets in a country which only sees 14% of the hours in year having actual sunlight. 50% of the hours in a year are darkness, leaving 36% of cloud obstructed gloom. If you look at the production charts the solar hobbyists post, the energy output drops about 70-80% when clouds obscure the panels, which means to get an average of 7 KW, you probably have to put in 14 KW area of panels.

The pay-back break even point is double that of sunnier countries that actually get some sunlight. Then of course there is the nonsense of solar producing energy when it's least needed and none when it is - which is winter.

50% of Europe's energy usage goes to heating buildings. Try working out how to heat a building using solar energy in winter. It's possible with a house built to passive specs, but lets get real, 99.99% aren't.

The real way to measure solar cost is to add the expense of an accompanying energy storage system that allows for 24/7/365 energy output. All over the wolrd, large amounts of solar generated electricity is thrown away because it is generated when demand is low. California, for example. Then you have Ireland's little problem, cloud cover and winter. These little issues mean you probably need at least 10+ times the quoted rating of the panel in area to get that rated output from the system consistently. Renewable like solar and wind are touted as producing 'cheap' electricity, and it's true, but this only applies under optimum conditions, which are rare. If you have to buy 10 hectares of panels in Ireland to match the output of one in Australia or the Sahara, the cost is 10 times what solar proponents say it is. And that's even before adding the cost of storage solutions.

They real kw cost of solar in Ireland is uneconomic, which is why there are sharks currently circling in the water, hoping for a lifetimes supply of taxpayer money in the form of subsidies so they can become very wealthy at taxpayer expense. A third of Scottish wind farm 'owners' are in the Cayman Islands. In Germany, the real retail cost of energy has doubled due to renewables. They have lots of solar, not because it's technically wise to try and generate electricity in Europe from it, but because it's subsidised. Same for wind. German consumers have been paying a massive charge on their power bills to subsidise renewables. If the energy were actually chepaer, their pwer bills, and ours, should have been falling. I know mine hasn't

This claim of greater solar panel efficiency at Irish temperatures is self-deceit that hobbyist PV enthusiast here engage in. A PV in Algeria generates 3 times as much power as it would in Germany, so likely 4-5 times as much as one in Ireland, despite being probably 7-8 times hotter.

The greater temperature efficiency of cold PV's doesn't even begin to compensate for the lack of light, which is one reason it's cold. So contrary to the lies, Ireland is not one of the best places in Europe for solar because it's cold, it's one of the worst.

As I have said, Boardsies with PV installations reporting their Oct production results have days of only 1.7kw and sunny days with 23kw. Trying to pretend that actually cloud isn't as bad as I or Met Eireann make out, is dishonest. I have some solar panels I acquired for a remote power project. I was completely shocked by the difference in output between naked exposure to sunlight and that from when they were behind just a double glazed window. They lost nearly 30%. Cloud is much worse. A UK site flogging PV systems claims cloud only reduces output by between 80-90%.

Here is some local data:

October Stats - galway

TOTAL 7.2kWp (4.3 south/2.88 west ) - Total production 420.3 KWH

4.3 Kwp (3.6 inverter) S/SW array -- 260.3 Kwh

2,88 Kwp (2.5 inverter) West array -- 160 Kwh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058050685/solar-pv-performance-thread-post-your-monthly-output/p31

Mid Oct there are about 10hrs of daylight, for ease, lets imagine there is no dawn or twilight tapering. So a 7.2 Kwh system can in theory produce 31x10x7.2 = 2232kw. 420 is 18%

If you think cloudcover is insignificant, rather than something that brings the whole system to it's 18% knees, then keep on trucking. As for nanowires and other pie in the sky; fantastic, but it's not real until it is. And becoming real can not be assumed as a given.

7 years ago materials science researchers at UL announced a Li-ion battery breakthrough, doubling their capacity and increasing cycles to at least 1000.https://irelandstechnologyblog.com/irish-breakthrough-in-battery-technology-doubles-battery-life-3a784f1b60ef?gi=9a586bd271ab

Do we have this? No. While research can sound promissing, as with 40% PV cells, using vertically stacked GaAs fibres grown with multi million dollar metal-organic vapor deposition machines, I doubt that process is currently fast or cheap.

Quoting the latest research as proof of something being industrially or realistically achievable and as a counter argument is juvenile.

Have you heard of micro LED TVs? Well they are the next big thing in display tech. They are they bees knees - landing any day now. Don't waste your money on a big old fashioned OLED, like I just did. They will be here any day now; just wait.

Micro LEDs were invented in 2000; 21 years later and even Samsung hasn't managed to mass produce displays using them.

Most interesting, I concentrate on small scale ,but avoided going from 20 v dc up to 230 ac and back down again,inverters and all that.Also avoiding the use of pulse mode power supplies to get back from 230 ac to USB, 5v dc. Some say possible cause of "Dirty electricity", a big problem in the States,if you look at sales of filters.

I suppose I'm talking Elon Musks Power wall idea,but staying DC, supplying the property only with 12v and 5v dc. Its just an educational hobby,costs virtually nothing,and is now supplemented with a 100 w turbine 20v off load.

It's interesting how many of our devices only require a small dc voltage,at reasonable current draw.

Moving from 12v lead acid to lipo EV batteries has reduced size and weight but complicates battery cell balancing.

It occurs to me , that when I see the awful scenes of power lines coming down during storms in the US, if they were 220v and not 110v,then the heavy cables would be half as thick, but it's not as simple as that ,when you take current and wattage requirements etc.

With all the PV talk here I thought I should share this with ye.

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/10/how-to-build-a-low-tech-solar-panel.html

Brilliant,well researched and not much has changed. Good to keep a sense of humour,and beware the arrogance of the Engineer,thanks.

I don't know whether this anecdote is of any interest but at the bottom end of the scale of solar panels we briefly owned an above ground, outdoor swimming pool - about 4m x 5 or 6m and just over a meter deep (probably 4 ft). While we were deciding whether it was worth restoring and maintaining (it wasn't) we found the heating system. It was a length of very basic black plastic 'mat' about 3m long and a probably 80cm wide which was unrolled to rest against a south facing bank near the pool. Water was fed in at one end , travelled through a series of channels and returned to the pool. We set it up on a sunny but not exceptional day and it raised the temperature of the entire pool by about 2-3 degrees over a period of about an hour. It was of course being pumped through by electricity (the same pump that was on for filtration purposes anyway) so not entirely the 'free heat' that it appeared to be, but the speed of heating that volume of water in a short time was interesting.

I watched an episode of Lives in the Wild? with Ben Fogle, where he was staying with a scientist in Siberia who was trying to do something like that. Getting bison to create grassland, as the forests were expanding, but their reason was that the forests are a darker green so warmed more than grassland (albedo).

Its horses for courses, different parts of the planet would require different ecosystems.

The power consumption of LEDs is utterly insignificant: https://www.christmaslightsetc.com/pages/how-much-power.htm

If you are that worried, stop eating cooked food and shower with cold water.