Oil, Peak Oil, etc.

Void · 2025-08-21 07:59:05

I would estimate that Solar Panels will max out at about 37% and be part Silicon and part Perovskite. The prices will likely be significantly less than it now is.

For Scotland, I would think that the sensible thing would be to have Ammonia Tankers, that would dock, and on the shore would be a power plant. The Ammonia would be bought from competing producers around the planet.

https://ammoniaenergy.org/topics/direct … fuel-cell/
Quote:

Ammonia fuel cells are emerging as a promising technology for clean energy, utilizing ammonia as a hydrogen source to generate electricity with minimal environmental impact.
What are Ammonia Fuel Cells?
Ammonia fuel cells convert ammonia (NH3) into electricity through electrochemical reactions. They can be categorized into two main types: Direct Ammonia Fuel Cells (DAFCs) and Ammonia Cracking Fuel Cells. In DAFCs, ammonia is directly used as fuel, while in ammonia cracking systems, ammonia is first converted into hydrogen and nitrogen before

Ignoring that there is wind power for Scotland, as you guys just don't accept that it is a good thing, then it would make a great deal of sense in Scotland, to convert the Ammonia to electric power on the shorelines and convey it by electric grid.
The distances are not that large.

I think that a thing that is emerging in my mind is local multiplication of value. The political trends of the 20th century permitted a vengeance against the "Rust Belt", by those who resented, and also a desire to capture it's industrial capacity to relocations to the Sun Belt, and overseas. America's Oil had run out. And it certainly looked like the rust belt was less desirable, and labor with less unionization was available in the Sun Belt/Bible Belt.

I do not hold much of a grudge about all of that, it was more or less a fluctuation in the pattern of reality.

Having a look at a post from elsewhere: https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 54#p233654
https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/bea … grow.shtml
Image Quote:
A question can be asked about solar power and "Aspin World" in North America. And a comparison could be made to the South West of North America.

The question is, "If Arizona thought Solar power was a good thing, at 19% efficiency a few years back, what about solar power below the Great Lakes, when efficiency becomes 37%. Even in many of those locations, the payback can be real.
But the surrounding assets are often better than for much of Arizona.

South of the Great Lakes was the Heart of the Rust Belt.

Global Solar power shows that the Rust Belt is pretty much similar in latitude to the Iberian Peninsula: https://globalsolaratlas.info/map?c=24. … 9.113286,3

But of course, it has more cloud cover than Spain/Portugal.

Map for USA included here: https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar-resource-maps
Image Quote: solar-annual-ghi-2018-usa-scale-01.jpg?sfvrsn=135d48b6_1

There are monthly maps in that web site that are quite interesting. April through September look rather good for the Rust Belt.

Robot labor to some significant amount could migrate with the seasons.

In the case of the reclaimed Dairy Farm that I suggested be groomed, in the early season trees could be worked with, and then clean up of left over growth from the fall. Then though summer and into fall "Weed" farming, (Not the wacky kind), could be implemented.

Penty of energy to do pyrolysis with.

So, I am anticipating making this old farmland groomed and a proper place for family people to have children away from the reach of Urban Loony Tunes, who want to exterminate the human race.

A portion of the population might be migratory as well. Sun following. A greater portion than now.

With Starlink and Humanoid Robots, teaching can follow the children, if they migrate. Due to AI and robots we are supposed to have an age of abundance. This would perhaps allow many people to have both summer and winter homes, if those were relatively modest in most cases.

A bulk of people leaving the rust belt in winter, would relieve the stress on water resources for the winter. And moving to more southern states, their water resources could supply a expended population. So, in the summer, the water resources of the southern states would get relief.

Also in the wintertime, in the Southwest, the still abundant solar would allow the creation of water resources from the seas or the air even.

So, for solar, I think it is less necessary to only use it in the Southwest. And the Southwest has a strain on it's water resources already.

The comparison would be Saudi Arabia, and Europe. Yes, Saudi has much better solar, but Europe has natural water in abundance, on average. Saudi have to make their water, using up their solar energy. Europe can use its solar energy for other things.

Ending Pending

Last edited by Void (2025-08-21 08:44:51)

tahanson43206 · 2025-08-21 08:11:09

One of our members recently posted about the process to make silicon pure enough for use in solar panels. A detail I remember from the presentation is that the process requires long periods of stable power, and lots of it.

I'd like to see the whole problem of "cost" addressed by using solar power to make solar panels. To my knowledge (always subject to updates) there is no facility anywhere in the world that is doing that. However, the amount of deployed solar PV devices is surely sufficient to operate such a plant. The best and most reliable storage system seems to me to be hydroelectric power. It is not the most efficient, but it is well grounded in experience, and it is capable of producing reliable power for long periods.

A purpose built solar panel manufacturing plant that derives all power from the Sun and uses hydroelectric systems for delivery should be feasible in 2025. That said, locations where solar power is abundant and conditions are favorable for a water storage system may be few and far between.

There may be regions where this combination is possible. It might be that Peru is a favorable location, and perhaps there are mountainous desert regions in the US where such a concept might work. Water could come by pipe from the ocean, and if the systems are enclosed then evaporation could be minimized.

Obviously, the funding for this would have to come from humans with deep pockets and a long time horizon.

However, for the purpose of discussion in ** this ** forum, it would definitely be interesting to see if this business proposal could work.

(th)

Void · 2025-08-21 08:48:19

You might look at RethinkX and Tony Seba: https://www.youtube.com/@RethinkX

They think that solar power will be good even near the Arctic Circle.

Ending Pending

tahanson43206 · 2025-08-21 09:05:53

For Void re encouraging post #128

I'll take your word for it that solar power is feasible on more of the Earth's surface than I had been thinking....

The conditions I was describing may be rare but not unique.... ample solar power near elevation sufficient for hydro power storage and a supply of water for the system. An island in the ocean with a dormant volcano might be ideal, if there is sufficient land for solar panels.

There may be uninhabited islands here or there that meet the description, but I note that just about every uninhabited location in the Antarctic region is apparenlly reserved for wildlife.

If a NewMars member has the time and finds the question interesting, please see if you can find locations on Earth where such a project might be possible, and equally importantly, acceptable to the inhabitants or owners of the property if it is uninhabited.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2025-08-21 17:32:39

Why so many fuzzy numbers for the embedded enery to make a solar panel?

Cost in cash is not the same as energy but that is how most think of the problem since energy is related to paying for the power...

Do Solar Panels Use More Energy to Manufacture than They Actually Produce?

Energy payback time (EPBT) and energy return on energy invested (EROI) of solar photovoltaic systems: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Calliban · 2025-08-24 03:17:57

The Chinese solar industry is crashing.
https://youtu.be/tRFWEy8O4rU

Prior to the Trump tarrifs, the industry was functioning as a pyramid scheme, with close to zero profit margins. It was reliant on future growth to stay ahead of debt repayment. But the problems with integrating solar into a grid system put a ceiling on how much solar power other countries could buy, limiting its rate of growth. Tarrifs have added to the problem.

Void · 2025-08-24 09:08:11

A bit of a reality check then. I suspect that China has been using it as an employment scheme to create jobs.

The robot Olympics suggests that at least some portion of China's robot research is not as great as we would be encouraged to believe. It may be that if humanoid robots can replace human labor in solar technology production, that path will get the cost of production down. I am guessing as I said before that China has wanted to keep as many people in jobs as possible, and obviously they would have liked to be the only producers on the planet.

They will still be able to produce for places in the Global Sun Belt, not including India. But prices will not be going down for a while I expect.

Places like Australia and Pakistan can still buy solar equipment from China, I expect, unless Europe, N. America, or India can do better.

Ending Pending

Last edited by Void (2025-08-24 09:12:48)

Void · 2025-08-24 10:20:43

A great hope would be that humanoid robots could reduce the production cost of solar panels and other equipment. This Video has good dialog. The visuals for the most part are typical and not unique, perhaps to protect trade secrets. It is a bit long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNJJ4H4 … noCreators
Quote:

Tesla Optimus V3.5’s AI Brain: Factory Boosts 91% With Hidden Power (Insiders Confirm It)
Techno Creators
15.1K subscribers

Last edited by Void (2025-08-24 10:21:34)

kbd512 · 2025-08-24 19:50:53

Reliable Energy Intensity Estimation
Global average steel making energy intensity is 19.76GJ/t (19.76MJ/kg). Rather than using the absolute best figure achieved, which is what our photovoltaics / electric wind turbines / batteries enthusiasts typically do, I think using a global average energy intensity value is far more appropriate, since steel will inevitably be sourced from wherever it's available. Steel is a staple construction material, one for which we have detailed energy intensity data publicly available because it's not considered proprietary knowledge. At 31.4kg/m^2 of solar thermal collector array, using 2mm thick stamped sheet steel mirrors and tubing for structural support (does not include the steel rebar in the foundation), the embodied energy for the steel is 620.424MJ/m^2, or 172,351Wh/m^2. Steel mirror support structure is identical to "tube-and-fabric" light aircraft structure.

Design with Sophistication, Operate with Simplicity
At least one company holding a contract with NREL ran an AI-enhanced computer aided engineering program for optimizing support structure geometry to minimize mass and cost. The end result was that support mass was about equal to mirror mass, using a welded tubular steel support structure. This was done for 5m to 10m width parabolic troughs with single-axis Sun tracking, not the gigantic perfectly flat "billboard" mirrors used by solar power towers. My assumption is that the bulk of generated power will come from the most simplistic and user-friendly solutions. Advanced economies can afford to invest additional material and monetary resources into solar power towers, where the overall efficiency of the solution might matter more to them, at the scale they require. For all solar thermal component designs, multiple examples of full scale hardware are built and tested, then operated within a functional power plant, typically for at least a year, but often for multiple years to evaluate durability. Thus, very little extrapolation of potential future performance is required. For photovoltaics, very small sample quantities are subjected to a battery of standardized tests, which is fine and desirable, but this testing tells you very little about broader context of mass production because it's frequently singular wafer special production runs in a lab, with minor variations for test purposes (also good to have), because scale-up frequently entails building a brand new factory to efficiently fabricate at scale. Real world performance is highly dependent upon process control and testing to minimize rejection rates, equipment in the factory which has a major effect on said rejection rates, the competence of the installation crew, and site selection. I've had an electrical engineer, a certified electrician with over 20 years of experience who specializes in commercial photovoltaic panel installations, and run-of-the-mill rooftop panel installers all show me the results of amateur hour in plant design. They all spoke of spending days to months of rework to salvage poor quality installation work. The consensus is that pure mechanical assembly tends to be less error-prone than a combination of mechanical / electrical / electronic assembly, because less knowledge and experience is required.

Expect Similar Energy Intensity for Solar Thermal and Photovoltaics
You have to add more energy for a steel-reinforced concrete support structure, but this also applies to roughly equally heavy photovoltaic panels with single-axis Sun tracking. Photovoltaics still use support tubing and reinforced foundations. Getting back to mirror design, a polished hot-dip Aluminum coating is also required. That adds even more energy to the final total for the mirror, because there are no free lunches here or anywhere else. There's a real energy cost to every concession made to design efficiency. The Aluminum coating is corrosion-resistant, which is why it's applied to factory automotive exhaust tubing and mufflers, and highly reflective after polishing. Surface finish quality of the steel greatly affects reflectivity, hence the use of a cold-rolled product. An electronic or mechanical sun tracking mechanism is also required for each mirror assembly. Troughs are typically rather long, but can be assembled onsite from smaller sub-assemblies for ease of transport. The net-net is that the total mass of materials for parabolic troughs, in a real world plant, is remarkably similar to real world commercial photovoltaic farms. Total embodied energy will be lower, but only modestly so. There is, however, a radical difference in the embodied energy of thermal vs electrical energy storage in electro-chemical batteries. The major difference between mirrors and photovoltaics is service life before unacceptable degradation occurs, the kinds and abundance of materials required, the use of field repairable vs factory replaceable technology units, and ease as well as completeness of recycling. All similarities between mirrors and photovoltaics end there. As previously stated, the Silicon that comes out of photovoltaics recycling is not readily usable in brand new photovoltaics, because the energy intensity of photovoltaics recycling significantly exceeds that of mining and refining virgin materials.

Supply Chain Management
Types of materials required by solar thermal generation and storage tend to involve very simple manufacturing processes by way of comparison to photovoltaics / control electronics / wiring / power transformers, so the supply chain is much shorter. Complete onshore manufacturing of stamped steel is possible for major economic powers. Materials and components don't need to crisscross the globe multiple times. Transport energy is lower as a result. The steel stamping / welding / hot-dipping equipment is far less energy-intensive per kg of finished good. All electronic devices require extensive supply chains. A myriad of highly specialized facilities are required to fabricate Silicon wafers and power electronics equipment. No single country contains all the materials or hosts all the facilities for photovoltaics and electronics manufacturing. There is such a thing as a purely mechanical dual-axis Sun tracker that uses solar thermal power to deliver torque to the mirror array. No control electronics are required until we arrive at the single electric generator and step-up power transformer.

Plant Security and Assurance of Supply
The most sophisticated hackers in the world will have a very difficult time affecting a mechanical solar thermal or mechanical wind turbine plant. Their ability to affect operations inside a solar thermal plant itself is near-zero without direct physical access. If the Sun is momentarily masked by clouds, all that built-up thermal inertia continues to drive the turbine and electric generator. Solar thermal plants can also include 8 to 16 hours of onsite thermal energy storage provided by tanks of pulverized rock or molten salt, because it's cost-effective to do. Only large storage tanks of heated material are required. That means generation doesn't end entirely at sunset. Strictly speaking, given sufficient onsite thermal energy storage, no complete backup power plant is required when collection ends at sunset. In large installations, the temperature delta between start of stored energy consumption at or near sunset and resumption of collection at sunrise, varies by less than 1C. It's similar to a nuclear power plant in that regard, but without the security requirements. If you managed to get your hands on some molten solar salt, apart from burning yourself, what else could you do with it? Perhaps most importantly, the entire grid can't crash the way Spain's grid did, due to the fact that purely electrical photovoltaics and wind turbines provide zero grid inertia. Vertical power spikes and drops are only possible when the turbine, electric generator, or step-up power transformer catastrophically fails. That greatly simplifies grid operation. Even if you did eventually have to burn some fuel due to seasonality or catastrophic equipment failure, you have hours to perhaps days to spin-up natural gas turbines, which means they don't need to run in the background 24/7/365. You only run them for supplemental winter power.

Solar Thermal Materials Details
Cold-rolled steel and steel-reinforced concrete are the primary materials required by solar thermal, plus a small amount of Aluminum applied using the exact same technology required to create typical factory automotive exhaust tubing and mufflers (stamped and welded cold-rolled sheet steel hot-dipped in Aluminum). The total mass of materials required per square meter of mirror surface area is not significantly more or less than the mass of materials required for photovoltaic panels. There are no existing materials limitations when it comes to delivering enough steel, concrete, or commercially pure Aluminum coating. We don't need to wait additional decades to centuries to acquire enough high purity Silicon, Copper, Lithium, Aluminum, rare earths (for the control and power inverter electronics) from extraction.

Materials Recycling Processes
The recycling process for Aluminized steel involves heating the shredded sheet metal to melt-off the Aluminum coating, and then stuffing the now-uncoated shredded steel back into an electric arc furnace. Presumably, most of the Aluminum and steel can be recovered. I'm not entirely familiar with the process used to recover concrete. My understanding is that ground-up / powdered concrete can be and presently is mixed into fresh batches of concrete, but like so many other composite materials, it's not 100% recyclable into brand new concrete, strictly-speaking. The steel rebar can be recovered and recycled at near-100% rates.

Solar Thermal vs Photovoltaics Service Life
A photovoltaic array has meaningfully faster degradation over time than a much simpler polished metal mirror, thus a shorter useful service life. Metallic mirrors can easily last for a human lifetime, possibly several lifetimes with periodic re-polishing. Some of humanity's oldest mirrors, made from materials like obsidian, predate our discovery of metallurgy. Metal mirrors with corrosion protection should last at least 3X longer than photovoltaics. In a very hot and dry desert, only scratches will degrade mirrors over meaningful timeframes.

I can simplify this obviously contentious issue to a pair of YES/NO questions:

1. Is 10 years of global (at 2024 production rates) steel, commercially pure Aluminum (the only kind that comes directly from the smelter), concrete, and solar salt or crushed rock production enough to deliver the solar thermal collector surface area, or mechanical wind turbines to compress air in places that are not sunny, plus 28 days of thermal and air energy storage to account for seasonality, enough to provide 70% of humanity's Total Primary Energy Supply?

2. Is 10 years of global (at 2024 production rates) high purity polySilicon, Copper, Aluminum, Lithium, and rare earth metals production enough to produce the photovoltaics, electric wind turbines, electronic control systems, and electro-chemical batteries for fast storage, to store 28 days of electrical energy to account for seasonality, enough to provide 70% of humanity's Total Primary Energy Supply?

Allowable Concessions to Dreamers
I'm perfectly willing to concede that potential future advances in photovoltaic and battery tech may be able to do what has thus far proven functionally impossible, provided that you are able to supply realistic materials demands estimates for all required materials. If you can't do that, then there's nothing to compare. You're presenting a fever dream with no numbers to evaluate. We don't judge merit on the basis of "nothing". In point of fact, we would say that "nothing" is entirely without merit, therefore any argument over the future potential of nothing is without merit. It's entirely belief-driven, much like religion. Maybe it will work beautifully, or maybe it won't, but nobody actually knows, so why are we pursuing religion when our problems are math-based?

The arguments put forth by our photovoltaics / electric wind turbines / batteries enthusiasts are exactly like debating the merits of man-made fusion reactors. Thus far, no self-sustaining made-made fusion reactor exists. We don't know if it's even possible because nobody has been able to make it work. Fusion is another future technology with potential, nothing more. Any argumentation over what it might potentially provide is without merit. Do the hard work to create a fully functional example of the tech first, and then we'll know what merits it does or doesn't have. I'm not going to bet the future prosperity of my children on tech that doesn't actually exist. No sane and rational parent would tell their child to simply "believe" that everything will work itself out, without a pointed admonishment about putting in the work to make sure it does happen.

I have materials consumption figures from actual solar thermal installs, which were helpfully compiled by US DoE and NREL, to use as sanity checks for my materials demand estimates. I don't need to dazzle anyone with futurism "nothingness" when I can show real numbers for real machines that produce reliable power. Opportunistic power seems to provide an irresistible temptation to people who deal in possibilities, rather than probabilities. Business and government operates primarily on probability. The US federal government spends some money on maintaining nuclear weapons on the basis of the rather low probability but high impact of a nuclear war. It spends many many more dollars on conventional fighting forces, because all wars to date have involved a lot more shooting than nuking. That's why track record and trust through reliable action are so important to business and government. They'll give you a golden opportunity, but then they expect you'll show up to do the work. That's what our "all-electric dreamers" have failed to do thus far. When it comes to sourcing the wish list of materials to put their ideas into practice, they think belief or possibility or "the market will figure it out" is an acceptable substitute for demonstration. I've seen no practical demonstration of a grid run primarily on their favored technologies. All the examples they point to are back-stopped by hydro dams, nuclear reactors, or coal / oil / gas.

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#126 2025-08-21 07:59:05

Re: Oil, Peak Oil, etc.

#127 2025-08-21 08:11:09

Re: Oil, Peak Oil, etc.

#128 2025-08-21 08:48:19

Re: Oil, Peak Oil, etc.

#129 2025-08-21 09:05:53

Re: Oil, Peak Oil, etc.

#130 2025-08-21 17:32:39

Re: Oil, Peak Oil, etc.

#131 2025-08-24 03:17:57

Re: Oil, Peak Oil, etc.

#132 2025-08-24 09:08:11

Re: Oil, Peak Oil, etc.

#133 2025-08-24 10:20:43

Re: Oil, Peak Oil, etc.

#134 2025-08-24 19:50:53

Re: Oil, Peak Oil, etc.

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