this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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Solar and wind energy could fulfill energy demand 10-fold, Oxford study finds::undefined

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

A change in thinking about energy needs to happen to truly understand why Wind and Solar and a bit of storage is enough. You have to accept that at times there will be overproduction of power because storing it to hit exact use capacity isn't cost effective. Some storage makes sense, but its much cheaper to have more capacity.

What I think will happen in the future once we reach the point this is how most energy comes is more people will be on Octopus like smart energy schemes where you might get paid for using electricity and there will be companies that use this to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. We are approaching a world of energy excess but only at certain times and there are opportunities to use that energy for the right reasons to reverse the damage we have done with CO2 emissions.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

if it's to cheap, the market wont be able to profit enough, so I'm pretty sure they will find a way to squeeze us dry anyway

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Will solar operate if there's a nuclear winter?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In case of nuclear winter, I don't think renewable energy is going to be the main concern.

However, it is possible to put solar panels on satellites that transmit the energy down to the surface. It's costly and dangerous, but a benefit over surface solar is that the satellites can point at the sun for longer time during days and send the energy to places that are not in the sun, thereby producing solar power 24/7. It's wildly impractical and expensive, but in case of nuclear winter it may be a realistic solution.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wouldn't the dust in the atmosphere also prevent energy transmission just as it does solar?

Wind, still works

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You'd use frequencies that can penetrate cloud cover in that case, it wouldn't work otherwise because then it would still be subject to weather.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some sort of orbital death beam? I seem to recall a 2000ad story around a space energy beaming facility that goes horribly wrong.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Oh sure, it sounds extremely dangerous, just like standing too close to a radar will poach your brain. The satellite beaming the energy back would have to stay on target and if it didn't it would need a quick and safe way to shut off. Of course dissipation of excess energy in a ground-based grid is a serious issue, so how you would design a satellite to deal with the sudden stop in energy flow is completely beyond me. Maybe you just write it off and launch another one in that case, and you have a lot of redundant paths rather than one critical one.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know for sure but it's particulates that make it a nuclear winter, not just cloud (water) but would also need to penetrate the clouds as well.

It's probably not wise for me to Google "what frequencies of EM can penetrate a nuclear winter clouds" though 🙂

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That's actually a pretty good point and I don't know how it would work either. It would definitely interfere with the signal to some extent.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As long as you clean the surface of the Solar pannel from snow I dont see why to shouldn't work. Even on cold and cloudy days our panel works.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Gonna need a tall ladder.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter

Nuclear winter is a severe and prolonged global climatic cooling effect that is hypothesized[1][2] to occur after widespread firestorms following a large-scale nuclear war.[3] The hypothesis is based on the fact that such fires can inject soot into the stratosphere, where it can block some direct sunlight from reaching the surface of the Earth. It is speculated that the resulting cooling would lead to widespread crop failure and famine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

No, you will be put into the matrix.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The only thing is that they take up a hell of a lot more space and are a lot more unsightly than "dirty" power plants. Nuclear power is great, the only quandary is what do we do with the spent fuel rods since they're radioactive for about another 10,000 years.

Nuclear meltdowns like what happened at Chernobyl and Fukushima wouldn't happen in the US. The only nuclear accident we've had was Three Mile Island which is nothing compared to the above two. Also terrorists attacking nuclear power plants wouldn't happen either because the walls of pretty much every reactor in the US are like 30 feet thick of reinforced concrete, they can withstand direct hits of a 747 or a missile (my dad worked on the one here in NJ), if an ICBM with a nuclear payload is targeting a nuclear plant, we're already fucked.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

IMO wind turbines are beautiful

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

One may look nice, 10 or 20 though? That's pushing it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You know what they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder!