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Posted
On 2/18/2025 at 12:57 PM, Brisketexan said:

The fact that all of these ROI discussions purposefully exclude externalities is the fucking problem.

Imagine energy source A -- can power 10,000 homes for a year for $10 million.

Energy source B -- can power 10,000 homes for a year for $7.5 million.

No brainer, right?  But.....energy source B, to operate at that level of performance, will pollute the primary water source for the area.  And, it will emit toxic emissions that will cause an additional 100 fatal cancer cases a year.

 

The relevant question is not the relative EROI of A and B.  The relevant question is the external costs of obtaining the $2.5 million a year in savings by choosing source B.  The cost of saving $2.5 million is an unusable water source and 100 extra deaths per year.  Are THOSE costs worth the money?

Of course, we all know the answer.  The savings could be a dollar, and the cost 1,000 additional deaths, and the obvious choice would be "save a buck, because shareholder value and we've convinced consumers that saving an extra few cents is worth making things a hellscape."

 

Hey man, the only time socialism is good is when the societal costs are socialized. 

Profits however, capitalize those, of course. What are you, a commie?

 

 

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Posted
On 2/18/2025 at 2:01 PM, Dahobbs said:

It is more complicated than that, but they could all be the same. For instance, any generator is free to sell on the ERCOT real time market. If they do so, they get whatever price is posted by ERCOT. If my solar panels at home generate power to the grid in the middle of August when prices are $.50 per kwh, I'd get the same $.50 per kwh as a 500MW combined cycle turbine power plant.  But most power plants sell some or almost all of their generation based upon longer term contracts with averaged pricing. A combined cycle powerplant usually is going to get a better long term contract price because its energy is dispatchable and can fill needs at anytime. Dispatchable powerplants may get lower longer term contract prices if they primarily generate electricity when real time prices are lower. 

typo that I didn't catch in time. 

 

Are you sure this is correct? Because I think the extra my home solar panels generate is bought from me by my provider, at a set rate, that I agreed to when I chose that provider. 

 

Posted
22 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

Are you sure this is correct? Because I think the extra my home solar panels generate is bought from me by my provider, at a set rate, that I agreed to when I chose that provider. 

 

It is correct. Whether you personally get it or not, depends upon your contract with your retail electric provider. Technically speaking, your retail electric provider is the beneficiary of the production from your solar panels. They sell that energy on the real time market when produced (although, theoretically, with enough customers with solar they could actually enter into log term contacts rather than just sell on the real time market). So, the energy from your panels get purchased for the same price as an other energy. You'll then have an agreement with your REP that will determine to what extent you share in those funds. 

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Posted

image.png.504f65b941b5ae0f8db5386688ef4044.png
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/solar-accounted-84-new-us-power-added-2024-report-says-2025-03-11/

March 11 (Reuters) - Solar energy accounted for 84% of new electricity generation capacity added to the U.S. power grid last year, but the industry faces a challenging future with the new U.S. administration's energy policies, a report published on Tuesday said.

The country installed 50 gigawatts (GW) of new solar capacity in 2024, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie groups said in the report, adding that 2024 was largest single year of growth by any energy technology in over two decades.

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT
The solar industry was a major beneficiary of subsidies contained in former President Joe Biden's landmark 2022 climate change law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

The Trump administration has said it was reviewing federal funding plans, and any removal of tax credits issued under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act would impact clean energy deployment.

The clean-energy sector has been on high alert since the election of Donald Trump, whose first executive orders prioritized unleashing U.S. fossil-fuel production, paused federal wind projects and froze funding for clean-energy projects from two Biden-era laws.

BY THE NUMBERS
Total U.S. solar capacity is expected to reach 739 GW by 2035, the report said, warning that changes to federal tax credits, supply chain availability, and permitting policy will cause slowdown in solar deployment.

The low case forecast showed a 130 GW decline in solar deployment over the next decade compared to the base case, representing nearly $250 billion of lost investment, according to the report.

KEY QUOTES
"Last year’s record-level of installations was aided by several solar policies and credits within the Inflation Reduction Act that helped drive interest in the solar market," said Sylvia Levya Martinez, Principal Analyst, North America Utility-Scale Solar for Wood Mackenzie.

"We still have many challenges ahead, including unprecedented load growth on the power grid. If many of these policies were eliminated or significantly altered, it would be very detrimental to the industry's continued growth."

Posted (edited)

Researchers have learned how to recycle perovskite solar cells. Silicon solar cells are landfill waste.

Quote

A research team headed up at Linköping University in Sweden and Cornell University in the US has succeeded in recycling almost all of the components of perovskite solar cells using simple, non-toxic, water-based solvents. What’s more, the researchers were able to use the recycled components to make new perovskite solar cells with almost the same power conversion efficiency as those created from new materials. This work could pave the way to a sustainable perovskite solar economy, they say.

While solar energy is considered an environmentally friendly source of energy, most of the solar panels available today are based on silicon, which is difficult to recycle. This has led to the first generation of silicon solar panels, which are reaching the end of their life cycles, ending up in landfills, says Xun Xiao, one of the team members at Linköping University.

When developing emerging solar cell technologies, we therefore need to take recycling into consideration, adds one of the leaders of the new study, Feng Gao, also at Linköping. “If we don’t know how to recycle them, maybe we shouldn’t put them on the market at all.”

To this end, many countries around the world are imposing legal requirements on photovoltaic manufacturers, to ensure that they collect and recycle any solar cell waste they produce. These initiatives include the WEEE directive 2012/19/EU in the European Union and equivalent legislation in Asia and the US.

Perovskites are one of the most promising materials for making next-generation solar cells. Not only are they relatively inexpensive, they are also easy to fabricate, lightweight, flexible and transparent. This allows them to be placed on top of a variety of surfaces, unlike their silicon counterparts. And since they boast a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of more than 25%, this makes them comparable to existing photovoltaics on the market.

A shorter lifespan

One of their downsides, however, is that perovskite solar cells have a shorter lifespan than silicon solar cells. This means that recycling is even more critical for these materials. Today, perovskite solar cells are disassembled using dangerous solvents such as dimethylformamide, but Gao and colleagues have now developed a technique in which water can be used as the solvent.

Perovskites are crystalline materials with an ABX3 structure, where A is caesium, methylammonium (MA) or formamidinium (FA); B is lead or tin; and X is chlorine, bromine or iodine. Solar cells made of these materials are composed of different layers: the hole/electron transport layers; the perovskite layer; indium tin oxide substrates; and cover glasses.

In their work, which they detail in Nature, the researchers succeeded in delaminating end-of-life devices layer by layer, using water containing three low-cost additives: sodium acetate, sodium iodide and hypophosphorous acid. Despite being able to dissolve organic iodide salts such as methylammonium iodide and formamidinium iodide, water only marginally dissolves lead iodide (about 0.044 g per 100 ml at 20 °C). The researchers therefore developed a way to increase the amount of lead iodide that dissolves in water by introducing acetate ions into the mix. These ions readily coordinate with lead ions, forming highly soluble lead acetate (about 44.31 g per 100 ml at 20 °C).

Once the degraded perovskites had dissolved in the aqueous solution, the researchers set about recovering pure and high-quality perovskite crystals from the solution. They did this by providing extra iodide ions to coordinate with lead. This resulted in [PbI]+ transitioning to [PbI2]0 and eventually to [PbI3]− and the formation of the perovskite framework.

To remove the indium tin oxide substrates, the researchers sonicated these layers in a solution of water/ethanol (50%/50% volume ratio) for 15 min. Finally, they delaminated the cover glasses by placing the degraded solar cells on a hotplate preheated to 150 °C for 3 min.

READ MORE

Roll-to-roll-fabricated hybrid perovskite solar cells reach record efficiencies

They were able to apply their technology to recycle both MAPbI3and FAPbI3 perovskites.

New devices made from the recycled perovskites had an average power conversion efficiency of 21.9 ± 1.1%, with the best samples clocking in at 23.4%. This represents an efficiency recovery of more than 99% compared with those prepared using fresh materials (which have a PCE of 22.1 ± 0.9%).

Looking forward, Gao and colleagues say they would now like to demonstrate that their technique works on a larger scale. “Our life-cycle assessment and techno-economic analysis has already confirmed that our strategy not only preserves raw materials, but also appreciably lowers overall manufacturing costs of solar cells made from perovskites,” says co-team leader Fengqi You, who works at Cornell University. “In particular, reclaiming the valuable layers in these devices drives down expenses and helps reduce the ‘levelized cost’ of electricity they produce, making the technology potentially more competitive and sustainable at scale,” he tells Physics World.

 

https://physicsworld.com/a/perovskite-solar-cells-can-be-completely-recycled/

Edited by Willfully Horn
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Posted
3 hours ago, bolverk said:

image.png.504f65b941b5ae0f8db5386688ef4044.png
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/solar-accounted-84-new-us-power-added-2024-report-says-2025-03-11/

March 11 (Reuters) - Solar energy accounted for 84% of new electricity generation capacity added to the U.S. power grid last year, but the industry faces a challenging future with the new U.S. administration's energy policies, a report published on Tuesday said.

The country installed 50 gigawatts (GW) of new solar capacity in 2024, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie groups said in the report, adding that 2024 was largest single year of growth by any energy technology in over two decades.

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT
The solar industry was a major beneficiary of subsidies contained in former President Joe Biden's landmark 2022 climate change law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

The Trump administration has said it was reviewing federal funding plans, and any removal of tax credits issued under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act would impact clean energy deployment.

The clean-energy sector has been on high alert since the election of Donald Trump, whose first executive orders prioritized unleashing U.S. fossil-fuel production, paused federal wind projects and froze funding for clean-energy projects from two Biden-era laws.

BY THE NUMBERS
Total U.S. solar capacity is expected to reach 739 GW by 2035, the report said, warning that changes to federal tax credits, supply chain availability, and permitting policy will cause slowdown in solar deployment.

The low case forecast showed a 130 GW decline in solar deployment over the next decade compared to the base case, representing nearly $250 billion of lost investment, according to the report.

KEY QUOTES
"Last year’s record-level of installations was aided by several solar policies and credits within the Inflation Reduction Act that helped drive interest in the solar market," said Sylvia Levya Martinez, Principal Analyst, North America Utility-Scale Solar for Wood Mackenzie.

"We still have many challenges ahead, including unprecedented load growth on the power grid. If many of these policies were eliminated or significantly altered, it would be very detrimental to the industry's continued growth."

 

Dual land use- grazing and solar generation. Sheep/cows/whatever get some shade, humans get electricity and wool/beef/whatever. 

 

Also, what is causing the unprecedented load growth? Could it be.. I don't know... bitcoin and AI?

 

 

 

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