[HN Gopher] Solar assets 'underperforming', modules degrading fa...
___________________________________________________________________
Solar assets 'underperforming', modules degrading faster than
expected: research
Author : lando2319
Score : 143 points
Date : 2021-06-10 13:31 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pv-tech.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pv-tech.org)
| ncmncm wrote:
| If correct, it is quite a large difference from previous
| estiates: double! But as an absolute measure, does it matter
| much?
|
| In particular, how much more would anyone pay for a less-quickly
| degrading panel, or for insurance against its lost performance,
| given how much less need be paid for its replacement in ten or
| twenty years?
| jnmandal wrote:
| The firm doing this research also sell insurance that covers
| solar panel under performance. So while there might be truth in
| what they are saying, just keep in mind there is conflict of
| interest here.
| tantalor wrote:
| How is it a conflict of interest? Their business is to price
| their rates correctly, so they need to measure the actual
| failure characteristics.
|
| Pricing insurance is a balancing act.
|
| If you overestimate then your rates will not be competitive.
|
| If you underestimate then you pay out more in claims then you
| collect in premiums.
| calvano915 wrote:
| This information may encourage more purchases of their
| insurance product. It's a conflict that is worth stating when
| considering the information they're providing.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Do insurance companies advertise?
|
| If they do, then spreading viral stories about the need for
| their kind of insurance is probably a valid strategy too.
| webmobdev wrote:
| How is it a conflict of interest?
|
| They could be exaggerating their findings - fear and anxiety
| are excellent motivators used by advertisers since the dawn
| of capitalism.
| jnmandal wrote:
| I'm going to assume you are asking in good faith. From
| wikipedia: "A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in
| which a person or organization is involved in multiple
| interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest
| could involve working against another"
|
| In this specific case where the firm is publishing research
| they have funded, there are essentially two interests or
| activities at play:
|
| A. research to determine the extent of solar panel
| installation performance or lack thereof B. selling financial
| products based on performance
|
| Since interest B would be negatively impacted by a certain
| outcome from interest A (a finding that solar installation
| performance is optimal, in this case), that implies the
| firm's performance of activity A may have been affected in
| order to reduce negative impact to the firm overall.
|
| We see this a lot in industry-funded research. Its not
| unusual. For example, recently a lot of airlines have funded
| studies about Covid19 spread in airplane cabins. To be
| published in a reputable journal, researchers are compelled
| to declare these interests in the cover page of their papers.
| Also, a good journalist will state this somewhere in their
| piece (normally at the top or the bottom, conventionally in
| italics).
|
| To your point about competition and rates, that is really not
| any part of conventions on declaring interest conflicts in
| academic research but I'll entertain an argument about it
| here because I don't think the market forces are as strong as
| you imply.
|
| The idea that a product will be priced perfectly simply does
| not apply in a niche market such as this. When you are
| selling a niche product, the market will not be deep enough
| to force firms into the behaviour you are describing. This
| already applies to things as widely held as flood insurance
| where the market is so shallow, that the federal government
| has to intervene to make it viable. Solar PV Installation
| performance insurance (not to mention options) is extremely
| niche.
| tantalor wrote:
| Great points, thank you for going into detail.
|
| I think "conflict of interest" is frequently misused. I was
| taught it describes situations where one's
| professional/ethical/legal obligations are opposed, such as
| an attorney representing competing clients, or a board
| member approving a contract with a company he is an
| investor in. I realize this is a semantic point.
|
| In this case, I don't think kWh Analytics has any
| professional obligation to a standard of science or
| journalism, so there's no conflict.
| Frost1x wrote:
| The conflict of interest is that they have financial
| incentives for you to believe failure rates are worse than
| they are. Insurance may need accurate assessments for a
| sustainable business model, but their business model also
| relies on people assessing risk as higher than their
| assessment or at least that an accurate risk assessment +
| overhead fees to assess it is less than my own.
|
| As a consumer, I only want insurance if I think they've
| assessed the value to be lower than what I'd pay out of
| pocket to 'self insure.' As an insurance company, I want
| people the opposite, that reality of risk lies lower than
| what you think it is, so I can make money. I want a bunch of
| worried low risk people to pay overhead and marginal fees so
| my margins are frothier.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Since they're an insurance company, doing this kind of
| assessment is their core business.. they have every
| incentive to not over or under estimate it. So you're
| positing that they have some real numbers on failure rates
| that they keep secret and some exaggerated numbers they
| tout publicly? That would require dishonesty at a level
| that would ruin the company if it was found out, so it
| seems unlikely they would risk it.
| Leherenn wrote:
| The funny thing with insurance is that if they ever
| become too good at estimating risks, they will destroy
| themselves. You don't need insurance if you can perfectly
| predict the future. Though I don't think we particularly
| close to this point, so I doubt they care too much.
| setr wrote:
| > As a consumer, I only want insurance if I think they've
| assessed the value to be lower than what I'd pay out of
| pocket to 'self insure.'
|
| I don't think that's entirely right -- the main value add
| of insurance is to the rare, mind numbingly expensive
| events -- ER visits, crashing into a RR, house burning
| down, etc. You're paying to minimize tail risk, including
| risk you couldn't possibly self-insure against in
| reasonable time (my payments to insurance is not going to
| reach the value of my home -- the bet is whether my home
| will ever burn down).
|
| Regardless, it's still a conflict of interest in this case
| Frost1x wrote:
| I agree completely, but there are two common/popular
| perspectives to insurance value add. One views it as a
| risk pool for catastrophic events like you describe.
| Another views it as a service that prices risk for you to
| help you pay it in installments. OP seemed to be gunning
| for the second perspective of what insurance does based
| on language.
|
| However you want to interpret insurance, there's clearly
| a conflict of interest that the business based entirely
| around assessing and managing risk publishes information
| that risk is higher than people thought and they are
| therefor more relevant as a business than people thought.
| polynox wrote:
| You're right that they do have an interest, but I think it
| is wrong to go as far as if the expected value of the loss
| is more than the premium then one shouldn't buy insurance.
|
| Consider a risk of losing $200 with probability 5% on an
| asset of $2000. The expected value of the loss is $10. So
| under your argument, if the insurance company charges over
| $10, it's worth it to self-insure. But what does self-
| insure actually mean? I assume it means keep $200 lying
| around. If you only keep $10 around then you won't have the
| money to actually fix the problem, and convert a loss of
| $200 (say, repair costs) to a loss of $2000. Under my
| values here it would take over 20 years' of premiums to
| build up what you would need to save to self-insure!
|
| As a consumer, I pay a premium (literally) to get rid of
| the risk and cap my expenditures. So in my example, there
| is some price between $10 and $200 where the insurance
| company can profit and I still come out ahead because I can
| take $200-P and do something else with it.
|
| Of course, you are still correct that within the $10 to
| $200 do have an interest in making you believe that the
| value of the insurance is on the higher end of the range
| than the lower.
| darksaints wrote:
| Normally when companies fund research, there is a slight
| conflict of interest because they want the public to buy their
| products and positive research can nudge them in that
| direction. And that research can be suspicious, and sometimes
| inflated, but generally the conclusions are directionally
| correct. And for that reason, I may scrutinize, but do not
| immediately discard the findings of soy industry funded
| research on the health benefits of soy, etc.
|
| All that gets thrown out the window when an insurance company
| funds research. Because insurance companies don't profit from
| consumers being informed...they profit from information
| asymmetry. Deliberate exaggeration of risks is pure profit for
| them.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> when companies fund research [...] generally the
| conclusions are directionally correct._
|
| I'm not sure I understand why that should be the case?
|
| After all, plenty of research gets handed over to the company
| that paid for it, who get to decide whether to release it
| publicly it or not - so negative reports never see the light
| of day.
| darksaints wrote:
| Indirectly, that's exactly the reason why.
|
| * If the research points in the opposite direction of the
| desires of the research funders it will likely get
| squashed. Researchers aren't typically keen on putting
| their name on publications that are pointing to the
| opposite direction of the truth.
|
| * If the research points in the same direction as the
| desires of research funders, it gets published. It may be
| exaggerated, but research that has the correct direction
| but exaggerated scale isn't quite the black and white
| ethical dilemma that the former scenario is.
|
| So asbestos companies might publish research saying that
| the risk of cancer is low, but they won't publish research
| that says that it is an excellent antioxidant.
|
| This same observation also extends to insurance companies,
| but with insurance companies, the conflict of interest
| isn't the direction of research, it is the magnitude of the
| exaggeration. Because the gap between real risk and the
| fake published risk _is their entire profit margin_.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Not only that, but they offer the Solar Revenue Put.
|
| https://www.kwhanalytics.com/solarrevenueput
|
| It's frustrating to see nonsense like this associated with
| seemingly every industry.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Why is it non sense? Hedging is essential for managing risk
| and if you can't do that you will end up with less money
| being invested in solar.
|
| There's a reason why this "nonsense" is widespread across
| (usually capital intensive, commodity producing) industries,
| and it's usually not because of speculation.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| Who else would you expect to employ actuaries with a specialty
| in solar power?
| boringg wrote:
| Definitely a conflict of interest. That said I think all the
| solar sales organizations/financial models I have seen have
| been bullish on the performance of solar assets and then refer
| to the warranties as a backup.
|
| If you are financing a project and the degradation occurs
| faster but not at a rate of which it gets swapped out on
| warranty - you want something to cover that financial
| difference. Also swapping out the asset has costs that aren't
| covered - so it isn't as simple as it would seem.
|
| It's the same as all insurance products - might need it, might
| not. At least in this case they put forward some real
| statistical data. And their comment that residential performs
| worse than commercial completely resonates given the LOE
| difference.
| hedora wrote:
| They say people were estimating 0.5% loss of capacity per year.
| If so, after 40 years, the panels would be running at 80%
| capacity, which is still well above the point where you may as
| well replace it, unless new panel efficiency improves a lot.
|
| I've never seen anyone claim a solar panel would last 40 years.
| Something is fishy.
| kragen wrote:
| Most solar panels from 40 years ago did in fact last 40
| years, though some fraction have broken or clouded. Moreover,
| the rate of degradation slows substantially after about 20
| years. NREL has published extensive studies on this. But
| manufacturers do not guarantee this (because nobody gets
| power plants financed with a 40-year term), and whether
| today's solar panels make it to 40 years is anybody's guess.
| It's common for manufacturers' ratings to be conservative,
| but that may have changed as they battle every last
| percentage point of avoidable costs.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| I think what is fishy is the assumption that the 0.5% loss
| rate per year for new units would not change over time as the
| units got older. Hazard rates for products are not constant
| like that -- there is a period when the failure rate
| increases rapidly after the design life of the unit.
| r00fus wrote:
| Exactly. Typically the usage cycle is 20 or 25 years.
|
| This puts the entire study in a poor light.
| millerm wrote:
| I agree that such reports are suspect and one should be
| absolutely skeptical of such things. I'm not saying this report
| is incorrect, but we need independent studies to support or
| refute such claims. Until then, I take it as a "That's
| interesting, I wonder if it's accurate". There is a definite
| conflict of interest here. I am fairly certain you would never
| see a report published by kWh Analytic stating the opposite if
| it were found to be true. I'd like to read the report, but I'm
| not registering for it. It's obviously a marketing tool for
| sales, not a peer-reviewed study.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| Sure there is a conflict of interest, but there is also
| inherent expertise.
|
| Insurance companies are well suited to study this EXACT thing
| and to come to a very correct answer. Also, if there were an
| independent expert who arrived at this same conslclusion,
| wouldn't you expect him/her to monetize their knowledge?
| sidlls wrote:
| Insurance companies are well suited to exaggerate risks and
| mislead by statistics. And they are very good at it.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| I think you are conflating two things. Insurance companies
| want to know as precisely as possible to determine their
| liability. It is the essence of their job.
|
| Now, what they communicate to customers is another thing. I
| bet they know very well what they are getting into... but I
| agree they aren't likely to be transparent with you about
| it.
| jjk166 wrote:
| If one insurance company tries to profit off exaggerated
| risk, a competing insurance company can offer the same
| protection at a lower premium and steal their customers.
| You don't make it in the insurance business by making short
| term decisions that hurt you in the long run.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| That presumes someone takes time to evaluate the claim.
| Unless you have data already available that the
| counterfactual is true, it'll take a while before a
| competitor appears to test out your claim and existing
| incumbents might just take your word for it.
| Additionally, the success of the competitor to eat your
| padded profits is not controlled solely by the truth.
| j_wtf_all_taken wrote:
| It can work in a well regulated market with healthy
| competition.
| webmobdev wrote:
| If I remember right, China has been the leading largest
| manufacturers of Solar Panels in the world for sometime now. And
| they are not famous for quality. I wonder if they did a
| comparison based on that factor too?
|
| If this is not just an issue with Chinese solar panels, then it
| is bad news for the industry. Solar power generation at home will
| not be economically viable if the solar panels don't perform and
| last to the 10 years or so that they currently guarantee.
| Especially when they are already hampered by high battery costs
| (which needs to be replaced every 3-5 years).
| oblio wrote:
| > And they are not famous for quality.
|
| China's been making 50% of all our stuff for a few decades now.
| From the cheap knock-offs to the actual, high quality things.
|
| China's "not famous for quality" because a lot of people don't
| want to pay for quality, but they can for sure make quality
| things.
|
| Several of Huawei's phones had just been declared "the best
| phone hardware money can buy" by several big reviewers, just as
| they got hit by US sanctions last year, for example.
| webmobdev wrote:
| China's "not famous for quality" because a lot of people
| don't want to pay for quality, but they can for sure make
| quality things.
|
| Sure, and that's what I want to know - are the Chinese solar
| panels being used in the industry premium good quality ones
| are the cheaper low quality ones?
| oblio wrote:
| As with most of these things, it's probably both :-)
| killjoywashere wrote:
| I just pulled my SolarCity contract and it does indeed estimate
| 0.5% decrement per year (strictly, it's estimates are 1% ever 2
| years). So the question is: who looses on this deal? My quick
| read is that they owe me a refund for any measured
| underperformance. Has anybody walked this dog out to see what
| their measurements are?
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Call me when solar shingles are actually cost effective. Having
| hulking solar panel nailed to my roof is a big no.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| My wife shares the sentiment. To me it's an acceptable trade
| off, similar to having gutters installed around the house, or a
| leech field for a septic, or a pump house.
| handrous wrote:
| What does rooftop solar do for roofing replacement costs?
| Seems like you'd need to get some much-more-expensive labor
| involved than the usual roofing crew for your typical
| asphalt-shingle roof, _and_ you 'd have to bring them out
| twice (once to remove, once to re-install at the end). Thanks
| to hail, I'm very likely to need to replace my roofing at
| least twice in the lifetime of a solar installation (I'm
| assuming solar panels are very, very resilient against hail--
| if not, I guess I'll have to forget about ever doing that,
| period). How much more likely are roof leaks with rooftop
| solar? More holes in the roof (for mounting the panels) has
| got to increase the leak risk.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| I asked this same question to solarcity when I had my
| panels installed 5 years ago. The deal was they come out,
| take off the panels, store them, and come install them
| again for $500.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| I think I'd rather have them in the backyard on some sort of
| human-accessible bracketry.
| driverdan wrote:
| It makes far more sense to have a separation of concerns. By
| having roofing and solar separate you can address problems with
| them independently. If you combine them suddenly a problem with
| one is a problem with the other.
|
| This principle applies to most things in life. Having a dumb TV
| and a separate internet connected streaming box, a computer
| with a dumb monitor, an audio amplifier and standalone
| speakers, etc.
|
| Combining things typically makes their initial setup easier but
| in the long run they cost more and generate more waste.
| barney54 wrote:
| It would be nice to know the degradation rates by panel
| manufacturer. Jinko Solar, for example, claims they make premium
| panels. How do the degradation rates compare with other panel
| manufacturers.
| YoungWeb wrote:
| "kWh Analytics' most recent figures place the median annual
| degradation for residential solar systems as 1.09% and non-
| residential systems at 0.8%. The report states that over a
| 20-year asset life, project degradation could therefore be
| underestimated by as much as 14%, resulting in severaly
| overestimated performance and revenue forecasts produced within a
| P50 model."
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| A solar panel's performance warranty will typically guarantee
| 90% production at 10 years and 80% at 25 years. It looks like
| some panels are going to come up a bit short, but at current
| solar PV module improvement and manufacturing rates, it's not a
| show stopper to have current panels exhibit a bit less
| longevity than anticipated. Very similar to LEDs with longevity
| promises that aren't entirely being kept but are still good
| enough.
|
| Panels have gotten so much better, I know folks who replaced
| 10-15 year old panels with brand new panels, even though they
| were still producing and within warranty. Panels are also
| entirely recyclable and infra to do so is being spun up.
| kragen wrote:
| Indeed! However, generation companies bidding on PPAs are in
| a somewhat different situation from LED lighting customers;
| if they bid 2% higher than the competition, they lose the
| deal, and if they bid 2% lower than what they'll actually
| produce, they build the plant and lose _money_ on the deal.
| So if the average panel efficiency over a 20-year PPA is
| 91.0% of the initial efficiency (as this article suggests),
| but they 'd budgeted for 95.4%, that's potentially a huge
| deal for them; it's the difference between being 2.3% low and
| 2.3% high.
|
| By contrast, there are very few businesses that will be
| unprofitable if their LED lightbulbs burn out 2.3% faster
| than predicted. (LED lightbulbs burning out is a stupid
| market-for-lemons market failure, but that's a different
| topic.)
|
| Panels getting better is actually another potential risk for
| these projects--if, three years from now, low-cost PV modules
| cost EUR0.09 per peak watt instead of EUR0.17 like today,
| then PV plants built at that point will have dramatically
| lower costs than PV plants built today, and probably PPAs
| signed then will also have dramatically lower costs. When
| plants are built without a PPA, this could result in those
| plants being "stranded assets" that can't make enough money
| to pay the interest on the bank loan, like many coal plants
| today, but even when there _is_ a PPA, the electric utilities
| and ratepayers (who in many cases are also taxpayers) have
| strong incentives to find ways to circumvent it, for example
| through inflation or bankruptcy.
|
| Now, EUR0.09/Wp sounds like a ridiculously low price; window
| glass, for example, costs substantially more than that. It's
| hard to see how PV panels could reduce their raw material use
| enough to get that low. So maybe it won't happen. Or maybe
| we'll find a way. (In Derctuo, for example, I suggested that
| new solar modules could use chicken wire instead of glass,
| though that might drop the efficiency of low-cost panels from
| 16% to 15%.)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I don't think they'll be stranded assets as a gas plant
| would be, as there's no marginal cost for fuel. If the
| project doesn't break even, debt will be shed, someone will
| take a haircut, and the solar asset will continue to
| produce. We're only talking a handful of basis points here.
| kragen wrote:
| That's a good point. The bank might prefer a haircut to
| litigating an insolvency, especially if the best-case
| scenario for the insolvency is that they get possession
| of the power plant.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| how are panels entirely recyclable?
| [deleted]
| imtringued wrote:
| Entirely may be hyperbole but solar panels are mostly glass
| and aluminum by weight and wafers can be resurfaced.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| They are run through a shredder and the materials
| reclaimed. Veolia in Europe has a plant in production,
| Australia is building one.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| Do we have any insight on what these panels will be like 30,
| 50, 80 years in the future?
|
| This is the lifespan of some homes, and power plants.
| lkbm wrote:
| The standard lifespan for a roof seems to be ~20 years,
| though that seems low to me.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| That's a US roof covered in asphalt shingles.
|
| Stone, slate, tile roofs in Europe (and in some parts of
| the US) have lifespans measured in centuries.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| We just had to replace our tile roof for a 20 year old
| house. I've seen estimates of 20-50 years and I'm sure
| you can find some that last centuries, just don't buy a
| tile roof expecting it to do that. There are still Ford
| model T's on the road today, but we don't tell people
| that cars last a century.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I had a house in Phila. with a tile roof, built in 1920.
| I "replaced" the roof in 1995, and by that I literally
| mean re-placed: the roofers carefully took all the tile
| off the roof, put down two layers of 80lb roofing felt,
| and reinstalled all the tile. They believed that the
| original was done with only 1 layer of 40lb roofing felt,
| and that this was the only thing that had actually failed
| other than a couple of cracked tiles. There was some
| expectation that the new one might last 100 years before
| it would need the same process again.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| What was the failure mode of your tile roof that meant it
| needed replacing? Coming from the UK where most roofs are
| tile I don't think I ever saw one need replacing there,
| maybe a few tiles need realigning. Most tile roofs were
| the same as the house itself, so over a century for large
| swaths of the country. The weather is less extreme than
| in the US though.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| "Tile" in the US probably (though not definitively) means
| "spanish tile" - those terracotta curved tiles. It's not
| the same as what I remember tile meaning in the UK, which
| was typically slate.
|
| Also, I spoke with some roofers in Pennsylvania who
| explained to me the difference between Welsh slate and
| the stuff from PA ... way less durable because the layers
| are not as tightly bonded, and then you add freeze/thaw
| and it just doesn't last as long.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| correct, Also the underlay needs to be replaced often and
| if it's not the tiles can come loose or get damaged.
| Replacing the underlay requires removing all the tile,
| which is labor intensive, and then depending on the
| HOA/owner preferences, you can try to color match damaged
| tiles or replace the tiles, or replace portions, all of
| these are done regularly. Depending on type of underlay
| used, it might need to be replaced every 7-25 years,
| again depending on the weather conditions and materials
| used.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| That's a reasonable estimate based on architectural
| shingles, although 15 years is more likely in latitudes
| with more solar exposure throughout the year (the Sunbelt
| in the US). Metal roofs last longer, but have a higher
| initial upfront cost. Huge fan of metal standing seam
| roofs for longevity (40-70 year lifetime) as well as
| robust mount support (clipping to the seams) for solar
| racking.
|
| https://youtu.be/k6mrRUZv8Ak
| nicoburns wrote:
| This thread has loads of people talking about roofs
| lasting 50-100 years https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com
| /discussion/5575330/when...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| My estimate is what home insurers use. Roofs can and do
| last longer.
| [deleted]
| cure wrote:
| Indeed - the LG NEON-R 365 panels I got two years ago have
| these specs:
|
| * First 5 years : 95% * After 5th year : 0.4% annual
| degradation * 25 years : 88.4%
|
| The NEON-2 380W from this year looks roughly equivalent, and
| they have these specs:
|
| * 1st year 98.5% * from 2-24th year: 0.33%/year down * 90.6%
| at year 25
| Proven wrote:
| Faster than expected by whom?
|
| The clueless government officials and climatists who argued for
| the handouts?
| Growling_owl wrote:
| There is no money to be made in the form of profits or FCF from
| renewables. Not only that, there is no money to be made in energy
| which isn't fossil in general. This includes Carbon Capture,
| storage, and nuclear fission/fusion as well.
|
| Fossil fuels extraction is the best of the industrial/non-talent
| based sectors, Saudi Aramco basically sticks straws in the sand
| and oil comes out at 7 dollars per barrel.
|
| Electrons they are all the same, there is not some consumer
| convenience in using green electrons.
|
| The only success story in terms of marketcap is Tesla, but that
| company is based on constant lies told by the CEO to keep people
| energized.
|
| If we manage to solve climate change it would be the biggest
| letdown ever for the general population: the way this thing is
| being socially and politically advertised people expect a
| technoutopian future where all of a sudden rainbows would appear
| all over the place from cows derriere in lieu of methane. A
| technoutopian pipedream sold by Musk and the like.
|
| In reality we'd just manage to keep things as they are now, our
| lives won't change that much.
|
| Tl;dr Long SaaS and fintech, short energy and construction
| Shadonototro wrote:
| getting rid of oil is not to "save out planet", but to save
| your civilization
|
| people in the west don't want an Arab hegemony, they want to
| control everyone, including their assets
|
| energy sells very well because everyone needs energy
|
| the only reason why terrorism exists today in ME is because of
| this, america doesn't want his hegemony to go
| melling wrote:
| Within a decade or so nuclear energy will finally be back.
|
| Unfortunately, we will have squandered 3 decades of not using it
| more extensively.
|
| What's that Churchill quote about Americans?
|
| [Updates]
|
| - I mean the start of building because we will realize we need
| it.
|
| - Solar won't provide a base load, no matter how cheap it gets.
| Yes, i know about the billions and billions of batteries
|
| - We didnt need next generation nuclear. it was important to
| reduce emissions over the past 3 decades
| deeviant wrote:
| Right...
|
| Within a decade, solar will have dropped another 300% and "next
| gen nuclear" will still be 10 years away.
|
| At this point, it's a dead heat between next gen nuclear and
| fusion.
| rswail wrote:
| We already have fusion.
|
| It's a 24/7 fusion reactor that requires no supervision or
| maintenance. There are minor energy losses due to its
| transmission being over 8 light-minutes in distance, but it
| provides 50% cover of the entire planet 100% of the time.
| deeviant wrote:
| Oh your talking about wireless fusion power. Yeah, that's
| cool stuff.
|
| I actually made the same joke about 10 years ago while
| working for a CPV (concentrated photovoltaic) startup
| collaborating with Sandia National laboratory.
|
| I was talking to a Sandia researcher who was working on
| their huge fusion-inducing laser and he was all pumped up
| about it, then, I mentioned that I really don't know what
| the big deal was, we already had working fusion power. The
| joke did not go over too well.
| mastax wrote:
| I hope so.
|
| I'm not optimistic that it can be cost competitive without
| massive government subsidies for construction, fuel production,
| waste disposal, and/or insurance.
| airhead969 wrote:
| I worked in the nuclear industry in the US.
|
| No, it won't be back here for decades, if not a century, if
| ever.
|
| Insurance, financing, and NIMBYs.
|
| They're essentially intractable problems that make it cost-
| ineffective when NG and renewables are cheaper. Why sink
| billions into something that doesn't have a clear ROI?
| sunstone wrote:
| Not to mention _much_ cheaper wind and solar with battery
| bridging.
| kaliszad wrote:
| I want to write some points, why nuclear probably will not play
| any significant role going forward:
|
| - In 1000 tonnes of uranium ore, there is 1 tonne of uranium.
| This contains about 0,7% U-235 used as fuel in most civilian
| applications. U-235 is used in the fuel in concentrations of
| about 3-5%. In the end, from a tonne of uranium, you can make
| about 100 kg of fuel used by a nuclear reactor. This is all
| used up in about a day in a largish installation. So you have
| to dig and process 1000 tonnes of ore each day to keep a 1 GW
| electrical output reactor running. The recycling of the fuel
| isn't economical unless you have a nuclear military program or
| want to do some research with various isotopes. That doesn't
| seem like a huge improvement compared to coal, gas and oil.
| Nuclear just isn't very clean in this respect either.
|
| - The technology and mentality of how we build actual nuclear
| reactors is stuck at best in the 1980s. This might change, but
| there isn't any conceptually new reactor running in production
| anywhere. Compared to wind and solar, where replacement with
| better technology is the norm, this is just nuts. Also, wind
| and solar starts to be competitive to fossil fuels when
| producing electricity in some cases.
|
| - Solar and wind don't have to produce stable output if the
| output is very cheap. In such a case, it will be economical to
| build better transmission lines, motivate consumers to adjust
| use based on production capacity and finally invest in clever
| energy storage projects. Good transmission lines (which we will
| need anyway, because of EVs and other electricity consumers)
| will spread out the production and load in such a way that the
| Central Limit Theorem will guarantee something similar to the
| traditional "base load"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem Cheap
| batteries acting basically as grid capacitors will smooth out
| most of the peaks in production or demand, which will make the
| whole thing more economical still. (As we can already see in
| several places.)
|
| - For winters, long term energy storage from the summer or very
| good inter-continental transmission lines are needed. This is
| not a solved problem but we still have plenty of time to think
| about solutions, but we really should think about them. Just
| building something conceptually stuck in the 1980s that is more
| expensive just to ensure we have electricity and perhaps heat
| in the winter without having to think about perhaps more
| efficient solutions doesn't seem like a situation we want to be
| in. We can decommission existing power plants over the next
| 10-20 years, while we think about storing the energy/ producing
| energy intensive stuff mostly in the summer or something like
| that. There is e.g. the possibility to produce ammonia, sodium
| metal or something else with excess energy that we can
| transform into electricity in the winter. There is also HVDC
| lines that might actually connect continents, which would solve
| some of this as well. There really is plenty of energy in wind,
| solar, tides/ waves, etc. that we can use. If it is produced at
| a low enough price, we might be able to throw some even rather
| substantial portion of useful energy away to transport it to
| the consumers be it on a different continent and still end up
| with cheaper power. It might be more economical to buy storage
| to have enough for the winter or to transport some form of
| fuel. I think, the reality will be a mix of all approaches.
|
| - We might do a better job of insulating our homes and more
| stuff like that to reduce some obviously inefficient use of
| electricity (e.g. for "just" heating, cooling, drying).
| Actually making infrastructure better is a good long term
| investment as it enables new approaches to solving problems and
| makes the quality of living better for everybody but especially
| for the less affluent.
|
| - Nuclear is regulated as hell, where wind and solar isn't
| really all that much. Wind and solar is very flexible, as can
| be seen in poor bu sunny countries, where solar is a way to
| have electricity most of the time without having to worry about
| diesel (or uranium for that matter). Some people have a much
| better quality of living thanks to the dropping price of solar
| electricity in their circumstances and they don't have to ask
| anybody for permission to use solar. They just throw it on the
| roof of a hut and have enough electricity to power a phone and
| a battery so they have light at night. They can now communicate
| e.g. about the price of their produce and educate themselves.
| These people will not see nuclear or fossil fuels as a solution
| when they progress into the middle class, where they actually
| can affect some things e.g. by engineering infrastructure
| solutions.
|
| - Nuclear always has the risk of a nuclear meltdown, which just
| isn't an option in large population centres. We humans are just
| too error prone to be able to reliably design and handle this.
| Because we are quite risk averse and have all the preventive
| measures (that have failed multiple times already) the cost of
| producing nuclear power just skyrockets.
|
| - Finally, if there were no nuclear reactors, it would be even
| more uneconomical to keep a large stockpile of nuclear weapons
| or to power attack submarines and other stuff that is made only
| for the purpose to solve problems by force. Perhaps there is
| some advantage to the fear of guaranteed destruction but in
| reality, we just wage wars using ransomware and proxy countries
| - nuclear weapons aren't useful there at all.
|
| The other uses of nuclear science e.g. in scientific
| instruments, medicine etc. can be done without nuclear being
| used to produce electrical power. We will have the current
| reactors for perhaps at least two more decades, so we have time
| to think about this even without building any new nuclear power
| generating capacity.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It will take more than a decade, because you need a baseline
| education level of the population to better be able to
| understand the pros and cons, and to realize that nuclear
| plants that have nothing to do with energy generation can have
| far more value to society.
|
| Actually, it turns out that the medicinal value of certain
| isotopes that we could manufacture at nuclear facilities far
| outweigh the energy value per fissile event.
|
| This is especially true for cancer destroying isotopes that are
| many orders of magnitude more effective in terms of precision
| and kill rate then typical radiation sources used today (or for
| targeted quantum dot medicines).
|
| Other benefits include potential safe nuclear batteries that
| would allow an iPhone to last a few years without charge. But
| these are inventions for future generations.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The weirdly tribal support for nuclear kind of confuses me.
|
| Like, 10 years ago I thought nuclear was an essential part of
| the future energy mix, just as a sensible hedge against other
| things not working out. It's maybe been 5 years since that
| became obviously unnecessary as renewables continue to
| progress.
|
| My opinion on nuclear hasn't really shifted in absolute terms.
| It's still much better than coal for example. But the
| possibility and now near certainty of solar, wind and batteries
| being better and cheaper has put them way ahead in relative
| terms. It's renewables that I've been getting new information
| or confirmation of old information which was speculative in
| that time frame. Nuclear hasn't really changed.
|
| The people who remain loudly pro-nuclear, then seem in fact to
| be super pessimistic about renewables compared with me, rather
| than super positive about nuclear.
|
| As you kind of confirm with your edits, you think solar is
| inadequate, when I think it is one of the most astonishly
| successful power technologies ever conceived by man.
|
| How did we end up with such divergent views on renewables if
| we're broadly in tune about nuclear?
| hocuspocus wrote:
| > But the possibility and now near certainty of solar, wind
| and batteries being better and cheaper has put them way ahead
| in relative terms.
|
| Cheaper, most certainly, but better, according to what metric
| exactly? PV has a higher carbon footprint than nuclear. Same
| for wind if you add storage. Both require at least one order
| of magnitude more raw materials (mostly extracted using
| fossil fuels). Land use is also an issue with wind turbines,
| not all countries can put them offshore. And then there's the
| geopolitical angle and the huge dependence on China. I know
| that the nuclear fuel supply chain has its own issues as
| well, but again the amount of raw materials is relatively
| small and fuel can be stockpiled.
|
| It's not about being for or against renewables. They have a
| very real environmental footprint and we're past the point
| where we can simply disregard that.
| bildung wrote:
| _> PV has a higher carbon footprint than nuclear._
|
| Not inherently, though. This is only because the current
| energy production is 90% non-renewable globally. See e.g.
| here, page 11: https://group.vattenfall.com/de/siteassets/d
| e/verantwortung/...
| pydry wrote:
| Nuclear funds a lot of propaganda. More than the carbon
| lobby, I think.
| jfengel wrote:
| The answer, of course, is "oil".
|
| The oil industry funds anti-renewable but pro-nuclear
| efforts[1]. That might seem counterintuitive, since nuclear
| also competes with fossil fuels, but the fossil fuel industry
| knows that nuclear plants take a very long time to build.
| During that time, more fossil fuel plants get built, and the
| renewables industry struggles and possibly withers.
|
| That creates a stripe of Internet commenter convinced that
| nuclear plants are the solution and renewables are terrible.
| They all use the same lines of reasoning, and it doesn't
| really matter how many times they're refuted because... well,
| because this is a playbook that has been used many times
| over.
|
| [1] https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-solar-
| kochs-20140420-st...
| runako wrote:
| For what it's worth, Georgians have been paying for new nuclear
| for over 10 years now, and solar has made vastly more impact
| over that timeframe. (Our new nuclear has yet to come online: h
| ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...)
| [deleted]
| bigphishy wrote:
| Nuclear is superior no doubt, but it's asinine to dismiss solar
| power outright.
| benlivengood wrote:
| With luck the new nuclear energy will be fusion. I'd rather
| pour every dollar that could be building fission plants into
| fusion research.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| What makes you think fusion is feasible at anything less than
| stellar scale? It's been known about for 80 years or so at
| this point and still hasn't reached breakeven. No other
| technology has taken anywhere near that long to even be
| demonstrated as feasible.
| benlivengood wrote:
| Powered flight, computation, batteries, electric motors,
| internal combustion engines, rockets, and a host of other
| technologies have taken >80 years to become industrially
| useful.
|
| Confined fusion has been demonstrated at Q=0.6, it just
| hasn't hit break-even yet which would make it industrially
| useful. ITER should exceed break-even and DEMO should
| produce power in 2051.
| Karunamon wrote:
| > _Within a decade or so nuclear energy will finally be back._
|
| I find this to be overly optimistic. Even millennials and gen-Z
| parrot the tired NIMBYism that has characterized all discussion
| of nuclear power for the past few decades, so that overly-
| emotional, irrational mindset seems to be alive and well.
|
| Its problems are entirely emotional and political. We could
| _completely_ solve waste storage, _completely_ solve safety,
| and we 'd still be dealing with the ignorant general public for
| another couple generations.
| brudgers wrote:
| Nuclear energy has a qualified personnel pipeline problem. Even
| if we ignore all other plausible impediments to widespread
| adoption.
|
| Hands on training is hard to provide and acquire. As in
| expensive and not widely dispersed geographically around the
| world.
|
| Nation states actively pursue programs that restrict the flow
| of nuclear knowledge and the development of expertise.
| Particularly flows toward low wage economies.
| airhead969 wrote:
| Yep. Most of the top talent retired, died, or changed jobs
| around the late 90's and early 00's. EPRI and the NRC aren't
| what they were either.
|
| UIUC has a great nuclear program (NPRE PSE), and so does the
| US Navy with hands-on experience.
|
| Building that back to a fraction of what it was would take
| decades and wouldn't be the same.
| bdamm wrote:
| Churchill's quote could be applied to the English as well, in
| this case.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Yes people keep repeating this nonsense. Nuclear despite years
| of subsidies much higher than renewables [1,2] it is nowhere
| close to economical to build nuclear. And we are not even
| talking about the unsolved problems of proliferation, long term
| (~50000 years) storage and risk (another subsidy btw because
| nobody will insure a nuclear plant). Base load is actually not
| a problem, you need a large enough grid and sufficient
| overprovisioning. In fact building a system with only slow base
| load reactors is much more difficult than based on
| intermittent, dynamic ones.
|
| [1]https://www.taxpayer.net/energy-natural-resources/nuclear-
| po... [2]
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Too_much...
| pjc50 wrote:
| By "within a decade", do you mean the start or end of the
| projects? Hinkley Point C is at the decade mark from its
| initial announcement and roughly halfway through the decade of
| its construction.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| It's not really squandered away. I am all for postponing
| nuclear until we can get our shit together and have proper
| security in place. The workers at the Fukushima plant had a
| lower salary than McDonalds employees. I don't want _that_
| nuclear. I want modular, mass produced, failsafe nuclear plants
| somewhere in the middle of the desert
| airhead969 wrote:
| Small reactors aren't cost-effective at scale because of
| physics.
|
| They also need to be near large water sources to use
| evaporative cooling.
| mech422 wrote:
| ahem...Palo Verde Nuclear plant wishes to speak with you...
|
| its only the largest nuclear plant in the country :-)
| airhead969 wrote:
| I think you misread what I wrote.
| mech422 wrote:
| >>They also need to be near large water sources to use
| evaporative cooling.
|
| I don't think I did ?
| abfan1127 wrote:
| there isn't desert spread around the USA. I assume you meant
| middle of no-where, but often times there are farms spread
| out in the middle of no-where. 10-15 miles to next structure
| isn't "far away" for nuclear.
| nradov wrote:
| Nuclear power plants require access to cooling water for
| efficient operation so most desert sites aren't suitable. The
| type of small modular nuclear power plants you're referring
| to can potentially be useful for supplying heat and power to
| isolated facilities but basic thermodynamics tell us they
| won't work for grid scale base load power.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| Unless they're fairly near to a city in the desert.
|
| Of course, you could argue that cities shouldn't be in
| deserts.
| mech422 wrote:
| >>Of course, you could argue that cities shouldn't be in
| deserts.
|
| Hey Now! I resemble that comment :-P
| nradov wrote:
| Being close to a city isn't sufficient. You still need
| reliable access to cooling water or else the efficiency
| is quite bad. Not much water in most deserts, although
| there are a few with rivers running through.
| mech422 wrote:
| 'modular' doesn't necessarily mean 'small'.
|
| Isn't Gates new plant all about creating standardized,
| modular, repeatable designs to lower costs ?
| thrower123 wrote:
| Utility companies are also doing hinky things where they don't
| correctly credit kilowatts that are put back on the grid from
| residential solar.
| anfilt wrote:
| Not subscribed so can't look at the report, but kinda wanted to
| look at the report. I was curious if they broke down the
| source/manufacturer of the panels.
| lkbm wrote:
| I was able to just click through. Here's the PDF:
| https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b4e34d1f2e6b166c33dc...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| What does the report actually say about P99 estimates?
|
| That's an estimate of output that should be exceeded 99 percent
| of the time, so it should be a very cautious estimate.
|
| But it seems weird to specify only P99. Does that mean all the
| other more ambitious estimates from the same system are fine? If
| not then why didn't they just say "PV isn't performing as well as
| predicted"?
|
| I'm trying to figure how that would be mathematically possible
| but I'm mostly confusing myself.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Someone linked the actual report, so the answer appears to be:
|
| There's greater variance in sunshine between years than some
| business plans accounted for, so while average performance for
| a site over time, and solar PV on a nation scale is still as
| predicted, one individual solar business can go under if they
| borrow all the money up front and don't plan ahead for having a
| bad year or two early in the term.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Well, that's not great, but not a disaster either given the
| magnitude of the numbers. What is interesting is the "lemon"
| problem that is similar to ones seen all over tech:
|
| > found different BOMs used within the same product code for one
| manufacturer identified a near-5% difference in potential-induced
| degradation (PID) between the two BOM combinations.
|
| Different batches within "the same product" can be made very
| differently, making it hard to buy for reliability since you can
| only determine this in retrospect. There's probably going to be
| an "IBM deathstar" or "capacitor plague" issue in the medium
| term. But it won't be very apparent outside the industry.
| tw04 wrote:
| "Chronically underperforming" seems a bit overly dramatic when
| degradation is 0.5% worse than expected. While tracking field
| performance is important, that doesn't really change the equation
| of solar being cheap energy.
| cure wrote:
| Well, you can look at it that way, or you can say that the
| degradation appears to be 100% worse than expected. They
| modeled 0.5% and it seems real world numbers are more like 1% ,
| at least for the installations they observed.
| ishtanbul wrote:
| It is a very significant difference in terms of investor
| returns which are already very low in the base case of p50
| and very sensitive to changes in output
| agentultra wrote:
| I'm curious if there's regulation on managing the end-of-life
| cycles for PV; there's an interesting article on recycling them:
| https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2017/10/the-opportunities-...
|
| But it seems it's hypothetical. As far as I know most of these,
| in North America, end up in the trash. Which is not great due to
| the toxic materials used leaching into the water system.
|
| Anyone know more about this?
| hef19898 wrote:
| There is some in Europe, we even have an industry association
| charged with recycling. How much of the old modules are
| actually recycled, I don't know. Chinese are buying used ones
| yo resell in developing countries.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| There are a few companies specializing in recycling solar
| panels. It's doable. Depending on the type, the panels actually
| may contain valuable stuff like silver, aluminium, or copper in
| addition to harmless silicon. Some of the nasty stuff includes
| lead and cadmium. However, it's not a given that that just
| leaks out of the panels. Storing that in an inert form in a
| landfill might be fine.
|
| I'm guessing the recycling industry will start ramping up in a
| decade or two wWhen most of the recently installed stuff starts
| reaching the end of its useful life. Older PV exists of course
| but there's just a lot less of that. It's one of those things
| that will get sorted as demand increases and economies of scale
| increase.
|
| Meanwhile, local regulations are probably a great way to avoid
| people dumping toxic stuff in landfills. How that's not a thing
| to begin with is a bit mind boggling. On a positive note, those
| landfills might be the mines of the future as they contain lots
| of valuable resources that people discarded.
| [deleted]
| wolfi1 wrote:
| much of the energy needed in private households and the industry
| can be covered with solar thermal energy. admitted, it's low
| tech, but the components are cheap and the efficiency is much
| higher than PV efficiency
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