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Or do both.
Go for massive pv but also simpler solutions like this and solar thermal and then fission as well.
i have such erratic work schedule, most of the time it will not suit but once in a blue moon it all aligns right and i can show up. i dont get it is it a zoom meeting? and where would i sign up for it or attend it?
Chatgpt says offshore wind uses 7t/MW of copper and onsore about 3t/MW.
So its a direct competitor with solar in that regard.
Do we have any type of consensus for what type of energy system the world should move towards?
I realize the impending copper shortage but solar still looks amazing.
Maybe a world super focused on solar but then sprinkle it with a bit of fission reactors in select hard for pv locations.
Like Scandinavia or such.
I have also never understood, why for instance, France, has so many nuclear plants.
Wouldn't it make sense to make as few and big as possible.
Each nuclear plant marginalizes a huge area around it.
And the area marginalized per MW produced should get less and less as the plant gets bigger.
I would think nuclear plant efficiency would grow pretty fast with size.
Wouldn't it make tons of sense to use the marginalized land around the nuclear plant for something like... solar panels.
In for instance, France at least.
Here's Chatgpt's take on this.
https://chatgpt.com/share/689f2fad-ea6c … 7c50b5bd3d
As for solar, once we get to space, solar immediately becomes many times more productive,
Due to no atmosphere, rain, clouds, darkness or weather of any type.
And quickly we will start looking into ways to nudge the panels closer to the sun.
With the efficiency growing to the second power as we approach it.
Their efficiency will be absolutely insane.
The space society will have no idea what an energy shortage is.
Not the way we know it.
And all the copper is there its just floating there in the asteroid belt.
"Solar thermal power has some very significant advantages. It doesn't really offer better power density than PV. But the materials needed to build it out are steel and concrete. It is thermal concentrators, boilers and steam generating sets. Things that we have been building since the end of the Victorian age. "
Sounds brilliant.
When i think about it, just heat something with the sun until it steams and then use that steam to power a turbine. Then we can do whatever we want with that motion energy. Sounds very straightforward.
This guy bent solar rays with water.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeSyHgO5fmQ
https://chatgpt.com/share/6898cb67-1044 … c9a2d127e6
Yes its a bit technical for me. I loose track a bit.
kbd512
"There are no new major investments into opening new Copper mines which are planned over the next 25 years, and it takes 15 to 20 years to open a new mine at the present time."
I asked chatgpt:
###
Your second point is accurate—opening a new copper mine often takes 10–20 years.
Your first point, however, isn’t supported—there are multiple major projects planned or underway globally.
###
https://chatgpt.com/share/6898cb67-1044 … c9a2d127e6
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But there is a simple reason why RE will never provide cheaper grid based electricity than nuclear power or fossil fuels. The reason is that wind and solar cannot replace fossil powerplants. Those power plants have to be there in standby, waiting for windspeed to drop or the sun to be obscured by cloud or night. The only thing the RE plant can do is reduce the fuel consumption of the fossil plant. The fossil plant still has to be built, it has operating cost and maintenance cost. This is in addition to whatever the RE capacity costs. All of these costs end up on your power bill. RE and fossil economics cannot be looked at seperately because they are both needed to ensure a reliable power supply.
###
This is largely correct today.
But will get less and less correct as time progresses.
With improved infrastructure of renewables, the energy production will be less and less reliant on one factor alone.
A solar grid expanding over entire continents, will only need to have sunshine in one location.
It can rain in Norway but that doesnt matter if its sunny in Sahara.
And the batteries are getting better and more abundant.
All those logistics are just one gigantic feedback loop.
Our solar technology is bad for we haven't researched solar for our solar technology is bad.
Its been working against renewables so far.
But now its finally starting to go the other way.
And theres one thing about all of this.
All the renewables are always getting better.
All the coal and gas, is just deadlocked in place.
No progress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwSkQa1tNmE
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62892013
The suppression period has ended.
https://chatgpt.com/share/689878ba-99f8 … c1d7fc7e60
###
The metal to make it happen doesn't exist here on Earth.
..
If we recycle CO2 and water into synthetic coal and petroleum products, something tells me we're far less likely to run out of coal / oil / gas than we are to run out of extractable metals.
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Copper scarcity is a good point.
I asked chatgpt and it said
"Copper availability is likely to be one of the major potential bottlenecks for PV expansion over the next 25 years — but how serious it becomes depends on recycling rates, substitution, and mining investment."
A few points i would like to add.
1. Copper tonnage per MW is going down.
In 2000: ~10t/MW
In 2025: ~5t/MW
In 2050: ~3.5t/MW (chatgpt estimate)
2. The multiplicant is 700, not 5000.
Current prodcution is 7% of world production, and will be 5000% if trend continues in 2050.
So its 5000/7 or ~700 folding.
3. Solar is production.
Pv production is not comparable to oil itself.
Oil is energy.
Copper/Pv is energy production.
4. Solar alternatives
As solar grows and becomes a sizeable chunk of humanities energy production,
search for alternative ways to make solar intensify.
We are coming from a place which basically didn't know solar. Didn't care about those things.
Solar only started to be anything measurable in the past 5 years.
There are alternatives such as aluminium.
I would be surprised if it would turn out there is absolutely no other practical way for solar to move forward.
Also because it offers this promise of infinite energy. Dear lord humanity will want that. Or should, if its healthy.
5. Projection
This is off course, a projection, 25 years into the future, in unprecedented times in humanities history.
Things can happen and its difficult to know everything in advance. Technologies improve. Solutions are found.
Hopefully.
6. Earth confinement
We are not really confined to Earth.
We have been, yes. But that has been changing with the falcon 9 and now really with the Starship.
The world is changing and we are living in historical times.
Earth contains ~ 1 billion tonnes of Copper.
The asteroid belt contains around 1 million times that. (chatgpt estimate)
Speaking off, theres a Starship launch later this month. Crossed fingers.
Its a vastly underrated project, for so many reasons. Mining is one.
I know asteroid mining is not a trivial task but getting access to Earth orbit brings us so much closer it.
I might make a post on asteroid belt mining.
7. Its in the end
Almost all exponential growth happens in the end of every timeframe.
So in this scenario, all that expected Copper scarcity horror is gonna be hitting the worst in 2040 to 2050.
But thats the timeframe we have the most time and resources to prepare for.
And 50 times world production is just unhinged growth. It could well end up less than that but still great.
###
If the price was actually heading to zero, then the rates paid by consumers of electricity would also trend in that direction, except for the simple undeniable fact that they're trending in the opposite direction. The most expensive electricity comes from intermittent sources. Regardless of how theoretically "cheap" electricity from photovoltaics and electric wind turbines should be, those rate increases accurately reflect reality.
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chatgpt take on this.
https://chatgpt.com/share/6898c4a8-c834 … fa6a4624f2
Heres how pv electricity cost have been evolving.
https://postimg.cc/phPGPTkh
source: chatgpt
Because solar has been tiny up until now, it hasnt been affecting world energy prices in a meaningful way.
That should be changing starting now or soon.
Heres a comparison of solar vs other energy sources.
https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6897459e172c819 … 62fcd71f84
To sum it up, solar is has become the cheapest source of electricity, and is still getting cheaper.
But yes we have this upcoming copper shortage as solar really starts to scale up.
Solar is undergoing many effects at the same time.
Economy of scale is getting better.
Search for solutions will intensify.
Infrastructure for solar will be improving.
Batteries are improving.
Copper scarcity.
And more.
###
And yeah, we're passed peak oil.
All the metal mining and refining machines on this planet are powered by oil and gas, to include the ones that are electric. If we're past peak oil, then we're also past peak metal extraction.
###
Peak metal assumes that we will be forever stuck on earth.
I dont think theres gonna be peak any material in the future,
All the elements are just there, we just havent reached them yet.
Is it peak oil because we cant really find any oil anymore.
Or is it peak oil because we have developed a better solution.
The concept Peak x doesn't differentiate between those two.
One is bad the other is good.
It matters.
Once upon a time our main energy was wood burning.
But then we passed Peak wood.
Then we passed Peak horses.
Now we're at oil and just... thats it?
Combustion is a very limited way of generating energy and thats not going to change.
It should not be competitive forever.
Here there is a graph, for how various energy sources have been evolving as a share of total world energy production, since 2000.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source
The most important thing to notice, is that renewables grow exponentially while others linearly.
Exponential growth is such that it can take forever to start growing, but once a critical mass is reached,
it explodes and takes over everything.
Its nothing until all of a sudden its everything.
Solar is precisely at that cusp now, it has gone from 0.01% in 2000 to nearly 7% in 2025.
Thats a 700 folding in 25 years.
So if this trend continues for the next 25 years.. well, 7% * 700 ~ 5000%.
Then solar will be 5000% of the worlds total energy production.
Off course that might not happen but u get the gist.
Its somewhere in the area of 30% growth per year.
If it continues like this, and looking at solar in that graph it looks like it will.
Solar will take over most energy production before 2050.
And we can produce fuel, methane and such, using the energy from those solars.
And since the price of solar energy (and consequently, world energy), is heading to zero.
The price of fuel will consequently head to zero.
And since with the starship and its continued development.
The cost of going to space is becoming mostly only fuel.
Fuel thats becoming semi free.
So access to space will become semi free.
And yeah, we're passed peak oil.
The graph posted by Calliban is interesting.
Its basically showing a very known curve, the same curve we see when observing cell growth in a petri dish.
At first it takes forever to take off, for the basis is so little and brittle.
Then around 1945 it reaches critical mass.
The only thing skewing it is the OPEC crisis in the 1970s.
And we basically know whats going to happen. Its walking off a cliff.
Exactly when solar is taking off.
I often think of this quote.
"The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones.
It ended because we found better ways of doing those things."
Thank u for the welcome, yes, its nice to be here. I can confirm the account seems to be working from my site and I will be looking at this site more in the near future.
This is a test post from the new offtherock account. The post is by Admin/Moderator to confirm the account is working. (th)
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