Solar energy

what if we like use solar cells to convert most of the sunlight to light that plants can actually use? You know with LEDs and stuff.

I've bad news for you OP:

I had a look at the abstract:
>The main reasons are due to the fact that on one hand, solar electricity is very material-intensive, labour-intensive and capital-intensive and on the other hand the solar radiation exhibits a rather low power density.

OK, so they have not heard of automation. Also low power density? We are talking about just below 1000 W per square meter of which you can extract 100 - 200 W electric power per square meter. And this from deserts where the area otherwise is of zero value.

I'd say the authors are pushing it.

>deserts

how are you going to transport energy out of deserts without a loss?
how are you going to store the energy to be used when the Sun is not shining?

>automation

robots to create solar panels? do you even know how much energy you'll need for that?

news.stanford.edu/news/2013/april/pv-net-energy-040213.html

we barely managed to recover the energy we've wasted so far, and now you want to waste more?

>how are you going to transport energy out of deserts without a loss?
>how are you going to store the energy to be used when the Sun is not shining?

you use solar to capture CO2 and then combine with hydrogen to make methane. compress it, liquify it, store it or use it at night. you can create a closed carbon loop this way.

>like
Fuck you faggot

>how are you going to transport energy out of deserts without a loss?
This is the problem with most of these debates: someone insists on a single, perfect solution. In the real world we have and accept both losses and the need for a diverse power generating system.

>how are you going to store the energy to be used when the Sun is not shining?
This is another common one.
First off parts of the trick is NOT to store. You use the energy as it comes. In most countries the greatest electricity demand is when the sun shines. Secondly devices like hot water tanks, freezers and the like can take the temperatur another 10 degrees extra when the power is cheap and/or available and then coast on the stored temperature until the morning.
There is also an industry building up in this field, look up responsive load. It is a huge field.

>robots to create solar panels? do you even know how much energy you'll need for that?
Sure, let us give up immediately. Then we buy from China.
>news.stanford.edu/news/2013/april/pv-net-energy-040213.html
This article actually states
> Global solar photovoltaic industry is likely now a net energy producer, Stanford researchers find
So we are golden already.
>we barely managed to recover the energy we've wasted so far, and now you want to waste more?
You fail to understand what continuing improvements mean. We have a net plus so the more we make the greater the result.

>photoelectric
Photovoltaic, friend.

>We have a net plus

Re-read it please.
We use energy from fossil fuels to make panels: which source of energy will you use when fossils will run out? You'll be able maybe to replace 20% of the exhausted panels, but after another 30 years, 60 at best, all your precious panels will be impossible to replace using only other panels as a source of energy. It's a dead end.

>which source of energy will you use when fossils will run out?
Wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and many others.
It is not as if the sun stops shining you know.

Also as the panels are net positive you will at one point be able to bootstrap with solar power..

BicMac = 221 g
kcal(BigMac) = 257 kcal/100g
m(BigMac) = 221 g
CV(BigMac) = 568 kcal = 2378 kJ = 2'378'000 J/BigMac
heat flux density of sun at ground level (clear sky, low humidity, vertical incidence, during day) = 1000 W/m2 = 1000 J/m2s (vaguely)
Area-time per BigMac = 2387 m2s/BigMac
trashy energy converting efficency (with blackbox from current to food) 0.05, trashy daylight efficiency 0.25 (sunny place, desert or so)
corrected area-time/BigMac = 190960 m2s/BigMac = 2.2102 m2day/BigMac
assumed minimum required energy/(day*guy) 3.5 BigMac.
Area/Guy = 2.2102 m2day/BigMac * 3.5 BigMac/(GuyDay) = 7.7356 m2/Guy
Assuming 1 billion Guys.
7.7356E09 m2 = 7736 km2
Assuming effective area for structure 0.20 of real area.
--> 30940 km2/1Billion Guys
--> square of 176 km (minimum)

honestly not as bad as i thought...

BUT: no maintenance
no cleaning
no production of raw materials
no transportation
no invest(ginormous)
no staff costs
(farming does not count as we do it however with the available enery, le bigmac was just a place marker)

>Wind, hydro, geothermal

If you run out of fossil fuels, every watt of the other sources will be too expensive to be wasted on INEFFICIENT technologies like photovoltaic: you'll need all of them to run refrigerators in the food industry, some computer in the banks, and very few other applications meant to save our civilization from completely stop working. Even industries that build bicycles will have a higher priority than photovoltaic. Recycling plastics will be extremely important, and so on.

Here's a really helpful guide to interpreting science news: whenever you see the word "study" or "finding" mentally replace it with "opinion", especially when the paper's hidden behind a paywall and someone's feeding you their interpretation of it without sharing the evidence or reasoning.

>Devastating Opinion: New Opinion Deems Solar PV Systems In Europe “A Non-Sustainable Energy Sink”!

>We use energy from fossil fuels to make panels: which source of energy will you use when fossils will run out?
Solar panels, obviously.

>You'll be able maybe to replace 20% of the exhausted panels, but after another 30 years, 60 at best, all your precious panels will be impossible to replace using only other panels as a source of energy
What? Solar panels produce significantly more energy over their life than is required to construct them.

>If you run out of fossil fuels, every watt of the other sources will be too expensive to be wasted on INEFFICIENT technologies like photovoltaic:
You can't just assert that, you actually need to justify it.

>need all of them to run refrigerators in the food industry, some computer in the banks, and very few other applications meant to save our civilization from completely stop working.
Only if you've done absolutely no preparation, and just lived like fossil fuels will last forever.

>Even industries that build bicycles will have a higher priority than photovoltaic.
???Why???
If you're running out of power, wouldn't you prioritize power generation?

Nuclear has better returns and is more sustainable.

>Solar panels produce significantly more energy over their life than is required to construct them.

nope
take into account the materials, installation, inverter, cables, repairs etc. and you are at loss; maybe at the equator with perfect conditions you gain something, but then transport will kill it

>If you're running out of power, wouldn't you prioritize power generation?

hydro, yes, or any other generation that makes sense
for everything else, your priority will be NOT TO DIE, so you'll fight over every watt you can save
wasting energy will be illegal

weakest counterargument I've ever see; anyway, here it is:
collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/ferroni-y-hopkirk-2016-energy-return-on-energy-invested-eroei-for-photo.pdf

>Only if you've done absolutely no preparation, and just lived like fossil fuels will last forever.

independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-energy-crisis-president-tells-women-to-stop-using-hairdryers-and-go-with-natural-style-to-a6976246.html

kek
only country ready is North Korea and some other African shithole

>ferroni-y-hopkirk-2016-energy-return-on-energy-invested-eroei-for-photo.pdf
That's not actually very compelling. The net energy per m^2 they calculate is smaller than several of the estimates they make. Plus, there are other studies that have shown greatly different results, such as:
dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/7966/98054.pdf

Weirdly, I also can't find any discussion of your paper or information about the authors. There's a bunch of copies of it on strongly anti-environmentalist blogs, but that's about all.

>independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-energy-crisis-president-tells-women-to-stop-using-hairdryers-and-go-with-natural-style-to-a6976246.html
What exactly are you trying to show here?

>only country ready is North Korea and some other African shithole
Yeah, no.

PV is net positive. You wouldn't be spending power from other sources on it.

PV is a highly improvable technology, and one that has been improving rapidly, very much like computer technology.

You only need to look at nature to see the potential of solar power: a plant's energy investment in growing a leaf can be paid off in days, so for instance under ideal conditions a dandelion can grow from a tiny seed to maturity in a couple of months and release hundreds of seeds in its first season. Starting from a handful of seeds, spores, and eggs, a barren continent would only take a few years to be covered in greenery. Some algae can double their population in a day under the right conditions.

Note as well that the plant extracts the necessary materials to produce the leaves and seeds from whatever air, soil, and water happen to be present, that it stores the energy it collects as chemical fuel using captured atmospheric carbon, and that it produces not only the leaves but also the means of producing leaves.

This is the potential of solar power: for the energy cost of panels to be paid back by mere days of their operation, for the materials to be as common and inexpensive as the sunlight they collect, for their production and deployment to be as completely automated as we prefer it to be.

More energy from the sun falls on the planet every day than all the energy we've released by burning fossil fuels in history.

The question with solar is not whether it can ever be good enough, but simply when it will be good enough. Physics is not the problem, nor is there any scarce material to run out of or environmental threat, only the limits of our technical sophistication matter.

>weakest counterargument I've ever see
It's not a counterargument, it's a helpful tip. Don't get excited about "a study shows" headlines. "A study shows X" just means "someone has the opinion that X".

>collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/ferroni-y-hopkirk-2016-energy-return-on-energy-invested-eroei-for-photo.pdf
Thanks. Yeah, this is garbage. They're trying to make an argument about the potential of a technology by averaging historical examples, including cost-insensitive boondoggle projects and pilot projects undertaken without any claim to being economical or net-energy-producing.

Like this bit:
>In other words, an electrical supply system based on today’s PV technologies
By "today's", they mean something like "the average of PV technologies in the field today", not "the best PV technology available today" even though PV tech has been making fast exponential progress in watts/$. Furthermore, they don't even acknowledge the speed of the progress being made. It's ridiculous.

Their method of EROI calculation is basically openly cooking the books to make EROI >1 into EROI

Get a venture capitalist to float you some money, build a breeder fission reactor in Africa near the most heavily populated areas to undercut all their power companies.

>What exactly are you trying to show here?

You didn't notice the irony that it's a major oil producer?

panampost.com/sabrina-martin/2016/05/04/in-venezuela-residents-resort-to-hunting-dogs-on-the-street/

poor dogs

chimneys have lots of carbon and some heat too.