Trying to math this out. Avg solar panel is 2Msq in size. 165W/m2 panel = 330w/day = 120.45 kwh/yr (est)
one panel crucially requires 20g (.643015 troy oz) of silver with 55,942M troy oz worldwide (est)
I think that means world can make 87B panels supplying: 10.5T kWh = 10.5B mWh = 10.5M gWh = 10.5K tWh
Except the world generated approx 17k tWh in 2020 alone. So (if I'm doing this right) there isn't remotely enough silver in the world to replace all energy sources with solar.
Those panels will also require at least 174B sq meters of land.
Meanwhile, the auto industry itself needs 55M oz of silver annually
I suppose that would depend on how much copper (instead of silver) would be required per panel versus what is readily available in the world that isn't already needed for other uses and the newfound level of efficiency.
Also of note in the production process no one talks about is what the quartz is fused with. The output is always referred to as metallurgical silicon or something the like. They never say metallurgical coal. 2 parts to 1. Also a significant portion of this high grade quartz comes from a single source in NC.
I am a big fan of Eliyahu M. Goldratt, read all the books he wrote multiple times, watched all the videos. If only he was alive he would have a field day with the crazy we have these days.
He also did have a video recorded lecture where he explained about 2008 while it was happening. Specifically on the issue of “if the end customer (of a supply chain) has not bought, then no one (in that supply chain) has sold.” During the same time where most companies were not taking on new orders, disposing of their existing inventories, being scared that sometime in the future buyers will be gone - all of which caused a huge supply issue. Right after the crisis weaned off, these same companies had to scramble to hire back the laid off workers and contend with a huge backlog of orders while their raw material inventories were completely dry. Bullwhip effect at its finest.
I downloaded the report and had a look. For New England, they expect that 100% SWB system would comprise of 87GW of solar, 27GW of wind resulting in a total of 3.8x generation capacity relative to current peak electricity demand. When capacity factors are about 25%, that'd barely able to produce the required amount of total electricity.
However, they think that they only need 1,232GWh worth of storage, which is enough for 89 average demand hours. That doesn't even start to address solar seasonality.
When I toured several Chinese solar panel plants over 10 years ago, the land for the plants had been donated by the local authority and they also were not paying for electricity at all, as a strategic industry the gov't was giving them power for free.
Pretty lame rationale for why China's involvement in solar production doesn't mean solar + storage is following an S-curve. The fact is, there is an arms race for solar R&D around the world -- every major research institute has programs for solar energy engineering, precisely because there are short term and long term gains to be had. Yes, China has used cheap labor and stolen intellectual property, but *now that solar PV is cheap* and *can be paired with 4-hour storage* its global adoption will only sharply increase by 2030 and beyond. Especially places with abundant sunlight and high demand charges. It's not like China is absorbing billions in losses just to turn around and jack the price up for the next decade.
The second point is valid: "Left unstated in [RethinkX's] analysis is where all the polysilicon will come from, how the new capacity will be constructed in time, or how trying to procure it from the market won’t drive prices sky high." I had this same thought reading their report. My understanding is they're assuming Wright's Law; that is, all things being equal, as global manufacturing capacity doubles, the price will continue to drop. The U.S. can completely stay out of manufacturing, and we may still see a modest 12% price decline per year by 2030. Consider an additional fact that this article misses: solar generation has *zero marginal cost*, meaning, it's basically free to operate a solar system because the sun is free. This makes solar not only more attractive to investors (faster ROI) but curtailing solar (throwing away the excess energy not used) doesn't undermine the cost of operation. This make solar fundamentally different than coal and natural gas. Overbuilding solar capacity beyond what anyone ever thought was possible will drive the S-curve adoption.
The third point is a strawman. So lame! RethinkX's modeling is only showing the economic feasibility of 100% solar, wind, and batteries *for the electricity sector* by 2030. Of course it is energy intensive to manufacture and install SWB. The idea is to clean up the electricity grid first, and then move to the more-difficult-to-decarbonize sectors, like manufacturing and industry. Someone wasn't paying attention to the scope of RethinX's report! (Derp)
I agree that China is a wildcard and the year 2030 my be a bit optimistic for 100% SWB, partly for reasons this article points out. RethinkX also doesn't even consider the impact of distributed solar and battery usage, which may make up 1/4 of all solar capacity by 2030. But, by 2040 it's a certainty that almost all of the primary energy sources for the electricity grid in the U.S. will be solar, wind, and batteries (for economic reasons alone).
Pretty lame defense of what amounts to a Kurzweilan acid trip. The argument of the clowns from RethinkX is that "100% solar, wind and batteries" not only is feasible to have completely rolled out by 2030, which would already be a spectacular statement on its own, but that it will also be the cheapest option in the market without any kind of carbon pricing or account for externalities. This is beyond stupidity for anyone that knows anything about the speed at which historical energy transitions have taken place on a global scale (i.e., anyone that has read a few pages of any book from Vaclav Smil). Energy isn't software.
Taking solar PV as an example, the point is that the bulk of the capital cost of solar power is currently not in the modules themselves, but in the BOP, installation labor and other soft costs which will be very difficult to keep reducing in the future. Polysilicon modules already cost ~30 cents/Wp, which amounts to around a third of the CAPEX of a utility solar farm and ~10% of a rooftop installation. Given that the energy requirements of either a polysilicon or monosilicon panel is ~3 kWh/Wp, just paying for such energy would require the equivalent of the current cost of the modules if power was purchased at 10 cents/kWh. Unlike in the late 2000s, there's clearly not much space for further savings on solar hardware, and in any case hardware is already a minor component of solar LCOE. And field labor for installation and soft costs do not benefit from learning curves as steep and predictable as mass manufacturing. Similar arguments can be made for wind power and lithium-ion batteries, the latter having been in development since the early 1990s (let alone what it will take for new battery chemistries to reach commercial stage).
No sane person denies that solar and wind power will keep growing fantastically during the coming decades, particularly in Western Europe and the US where they just respectively get a combined ~10% and 15% of grid penetration nowadays. "Fantastic growth" is still miles away from the assertion of 100% penetration happening in 10 years or so.
One estimate of wafer quality poly silicon capacity puts annual production at a level to support 675 GW of wafer production annually, in excess of actual wafer capacity. And both
Poly silicon and wafer capacity additions are underway in a massive way. I don’t think this is the bottleneck as presented in the post.
I think Doomsberg should invite Rethinkx to respond. Let’s get beyond a gotcha post and have a conversation and debate so we can evaluate the report’s provocative thesis. If they are correct, what’s happening is a major historic event.
Behind all of this, note that the latest Lazard report puts the construction costs of utility new solar plants within 10% of fully depreciated nat gas operating costs. In ERCOT, with its incredibly low nat gas unit costs, SWB plants are pretty much the only ones being built. Let that sink in.
Of course we will one day be able to run our society off wind and solar, or what's left of it after the collapse brought on by a rushed attempt to run a modern economy on an unreliable power grid supplied by nothing but wind and solar. By then societies power requirements will be very modest. If a power line and a substation would have appeared suddenly in the middle of a feudal village it would have been no benefit to the villagers nor would it probably benefit future villagers if this transition to renewable energy sources is rushed and very likely bungled. What could possibly go wrong.
Common sense is the REAL restraint. Remove that and all things are possible.
The real opportunity will be in distribution of European plumbing supplies when every winter going forward necessitates replacing burst pipes in condo towers.
The fallacy of climate change and the externalities associated with the fraud will likely climax by 2025; especially if the leftist regime is voted out. A nice cold late winter may catch many by surprise, because, you know climate change will destroy us within ten years, and temps keep increasing. What a study this decade will make for future historians writing papers on the foolishness of mankind to come to the brink of ruin, not by the myth that is climate change (Climate has been "changing", since the first day of it's existence), but by the complete lack of investment in traditional fuels to power a very power hungry world. Fertilizer is rising, 2022 food prices will spike, pipelines are being decommissioned in the West, and Putin is laughing and ready to give the screws to the Europe by simply regulating the flow of NATGAS. May be time to learn Russian; not Chinese. Anyway. Another gem by the chicken. Thank you for your efforts!
For that video… Tell me you don’t understand economics without telling me you don’t understand economics. Lol
Trying to math this out. Avg solar panel is 2Msq in size. 165W/m2 panel = 330w/day = 120.45 kwh/yr (est)
one panel crucially requires 20g (.643015 troy oz) of silver with 55,942M troy oz worldwide (est)
I think that means world can make 87B panels supplying: 10.5T kWh = 10.5B mWh = 10.5M gWh = 10.5K tWh
Except the world generated approx 17k tWh in 2020 alone. So (if I'm doing this right) there isn't remotely enough silver in the world to replace all energy sources with solar.
Those panels will also require at least 174B sq meters of land.
Meanwhile, the auto industry itself needs 55M oz of silver annually
What if a company figured out how to replace silver with copper and do it while improving efficiency?
I suppose that would depend on how much copper (instead of silver) would be required per panel versus what is readily available in the world that isn't already needed for other uses and the newfound level of efficiency.
https://sciencing.com/tinned-copper-wire-5879934.html
To me the correct assumption is always that the industry would have done it already if it was feasible (until someone figures it out of course).
Also of note in the production process no one talks about is what the quartz is fused with. The output is always referred to as metallurgical silicon or something the like. They never say metallurgical coal. 2 parts to 1. Also a significant portion of this high grade quartz comes from a single source in NC.
I am a big fan of Eliyahu M. Goldratt, read all the books he wrote multiple times, watched all the videos. If only he was alive he would have a field day with the crazy we have these days.
He also did have a video recorded lecture where he explained about 2008 while it was happening. Specifically on the issue of “if the end customer (of a supply chain) has not bought, then no one (in that supply chain) has sold.” During the same time where most companies were not taking on new orders, disposing of their existing inventories, being scared that sometime in the future buyers will be gone - all of which caused a huge supply issue. Right after the crisis weaned off, these same companies had to scramble to hire back the laid off workers and contend with a huge backlog of orders while their raw material inventories were completely dry. Bullwhip effect at its finest.
C'mon, Doomie if we let you peck at the fermented corn what will you really say?
I downloaded the report and had a look. For New England, they expect that 100% SWB system would comprise of 87GW of solar, 27GW of wind resulting in a total of 3.8x generation capacity relative to current peak electricity demand. When capacity factors are about 25%, that'd barely able to produce the required amount of total electricity.
However, they think that they only need 1,232GWh worth of storage, which is enough for 89 average demand hours. That doesn't even start to address solar seasonality.
When I toured several Chinese solar panel plants over 10 years ago, the land for the plants had been donated by the local authority and they also were not paying for electricity at all, as a strategic industry the gov't was giving them power for free.
Josh Wolfe of Lux is right. Nuclear needs a rebrand as "elemental energy."
Pretty lame rationale for why China's involvement in solar production doesn't mean solar + storage is following an S-curve. The fact is, there is an arms race for solar R&D around the world -- every major research institute has programs for solar energy engineering, precisely because there are short term and long term gains to be had. Yes, China has used cheap labor and stolen intellectual property, but *now that solar PV is cheap* and *can be paired with 4-hour storage* its global adoption will only sharply increase by 2030 and beyond. Especially places with abundant sunlight and high demand charges. It's not like China is absorbing billions in losses just to turn around and jack the price up for the next decade.
The second point is valid: "Left unstated in [RethinkX's] analysis is where all the polysilicon will come from, how the new capacity will be constructed in time, or how trying to procure it from the market won’t drive prices sky high." I had this same thought reading their report. My understanding is they're assuming Wright's Law; that is, all things being equal, as global manufacturing capacity doubles, the price will continue to drop. The U.S. can completely stay out of manufacturing, and we may still see a modest 12% price decline per year by 2030. Consider an additional fact that this article misses: solar generation has *zero marginal cost*, meaning, it's basically free to operate a solar system because the sun is free. This makes solar not only more attractive to investors (faster ROI) but curtailing solar (throwing away the excess energy not used) doesn't undermine the cost of operation. This make solar fundamentally different than coal and natural gas. Overbuilding solar capacity beyond what anyone ever thought was possible will drive the S-curve adoption.
The third point is a strawman. So lame! RethinkX's modeling is only showing the economic feasibility of 100% solar, wind, and batteries *for the electricity sector* by 2030. Of course it is energy intensive to manufacture and install SWB. The idea is to clean up the electricity grid first, and then move to the more-difficult-to-decarbonize sectors, like manufacturing and industry. Someone wasn't paying attention to the scope of RethinX's report! (Derp)
I agree that China is a wildcard and the year 2030 my be a bit optimistic for 100% SWB, partly for reasons this article points out. RethinkX also doesn't even consider the impact of distributed solar and battery usage, which may make up 1/4 of all solar capacity by 2030. But, by 2040 it's a certainty that almost all of the primary energy sources for the electricity grid in the U.S. will be solar, wind, and batteries (for economic reasons alone).
Pretty lame defense of what amounts to a Kurzweilan acid trip. The argument of the clowns from RethinkX is that "100% solar, wind and batteries" not only is feasible to have completely rolled out by 2030, which would already be a spectacular statement on its own, but that it will also be the cheapest option in the market without any kind of carbon pricing or account for externalities. This is beyond stupidity for anyone that knows anything about the speed at which historical energy transitions have taken place on a global scale (i.e., anyone that has read a few pages of any book from Vaclav Smil). Energy isn't software.
Taking solar PV as an example, the point is that the bulk of the capital cost of solar power is currently not in the modules themselves, but in the BOP, installation labor and other soft costs which will be very difficult to keep reducing in the future. Polysilicon modules already cost ~30 cents/Wp, which amounts to around a third of the CAPEX of a utility solar farm and ~10% of a rooftop installation. Given that the energy requirements of either a polysilicon or monosilicon panel is ~3 kWh/Wp, just paying for such energy would require the equivalent of the current cost of the modules if power was purchased at 10 cents/kWh. Unlike in the late 2000s, there's clearly not much space for further savings on solar hardware, and in any case hardware is already a minor component of solar LCOE. And field labor for installation and soft costs do not benefit from learning curves as steep and predictable as mass manufacturing. Similar arguments can be made for wind power and lithium-ion batteries, the latter having been in development since the early 1990s (let alone what it will take for new battery chemistries to reach commercial stage).
No sane person denies that solar and wind power will keep growing fantastically during the coming decades, particularly in Western Europe and the US where they just respectively get a combined ~10% and 15% of grid penetration nowadays. "Fantastic growth" is still miles away from the assertion of 100% penetration happening in 10 years or so.
One estimate of wafer quality poly silicon capacity puts annual production at a level to support 675 GW of wafer production annually, in excess of actual wafer capacity. And both
Poly silicon and wafer capacity additions are underway in a massive way. I don’t think this is the bottleneck as presented in the post.
I think Doomsberg should invite Rethinkx to respond. Let’s get beyond a gotcha post and have a conversation and debate so we can evaluate the report’s provocative thesis. If they are correct, what’s happening is a major historic event.
Behind all of this, note that the latest Lazard report puts the construction costs of utility new solar plants within 10% of fully depreciated nat gas operating costs. In ERCOT, with its incredibly low nat gas unit costs, SWB plants are pretty much the only ones being built. Let that sink in.
What a great piece! Doomberg, you made my day!
Of course we will one day be able to run our society off wind and solar, or what's left of it after the collapse brought on by a rushed attempt to run a modern economy on an unreliable power grid supplied by nothing but wind and solar. By then societies power requirements will be very modest. If a power line and a substation would have appeared suddenly in the middle of a feudal village it would have been no benefit to the villagers nor would it probably benefit future villagers if this transition to renewable energy sources is rushed and very likely bungled. What could possibly go wrong.
Common sense is the REAL restraint. Remove that and all things are possible.
The real opportunity will be in distribution of European plumbing supplies when every winter going forward necessitates replacing burst pipes in condo towers.
The fallacy of climate change and the externalities associated with the fraud will likely climax by 2025; especially if the leftist regime is voted out. A nice cold late winter may catch many by surprise, because, you know climate change will destroy us within ten years, and temps keep increasing. What a study this decade will make for future historians writing papers on the foolishness of mankind to come to the brink of ruin, not by the myth that is climate change (Climate has been "changing", since the first day of it's existence), but by the complete lack of investment in traditional fuels to power a very power hungry world. Fertilizer is rising, 2022 food prices will spike, pipelines are being decommissioned in the West, and Putin is laughing and ready to give the screws to the Europe by simply regulating the flow of NATGAS. May be time to learn Russian; not Chinese. Anyway. Another gem by the chicken. Thank you for your efforts!
I too will listen to the chicken if he continues to wear a tie
Swear to God, if I see the Blockbuster-Netflix example pulled up one more time I am jumping through the window!
Fatties are the worst am I right?