Its always made sense to me but I guess being an engineer, and trusting the science, it makes it easy.

Collectively, China is still producing far, far more than the US is and has the plans to complete multiple new solar farms in its various deserts. The amount of solar that China is generating could fit the energy needs of India. I don't think that will change - China simply needs a lot more energy than the US.

@Carl_in_AZ

4 ай бұрын

🔌🔌China has to do something to brag about going green with over 57% of its electricity coming from coal and roughly 200 electric coal plants under construction. They do not need more energy than the USA they need clean energy🔌🔌

@DeeyaGarg

4 ай бұрын

China’s scale is allowing prices to drop further. It would be spectacular to see Australia build out the electric grid to Asia and start exporting electricity

@jordycorvers7465

2 ай бұрын

As a european we have a lot of aligned interests with China when it comes to renewables. US, Russia, Middle East mainly want to keep selling us fossil fuels at forever rising prices.

These solar farms are the future for grid power, because if designed intelligently, they can enhance productivity of agricultural land, not diminish it. The partial shade improves conditions for grazing livestock, but also improves conditions for some crops, where harsh sunlight dries out the surface moisture too quickly to enable best yields. (and harsh sunlight is a reality for most of Australia.) The panels also offer the opportunity to catch rainwater and store it in tanks rather than in the soil, where it evaporates too quickly to be of maximum benefit. 20 years ago farmers in South Australia were reluctant to have wind turbines on their properties; there was the usual negativity, but time has proven the fears largely unfounded, and those with the turbines now consider themselves lucky; they get an extra, reliable income from the rent from the turbines, and their farming is unaffected. I see a similar scenario with solar cells, only more so.

@Peye-pv4cb

4 ай бұрын

Do you have a windmill powering your house off the grid

@davidinkster1296

4 ай бұрын

@@robertfonovic3551I am a farmer, and I can assure you that my grass does indeed grow under the trees on my land.

@davidinkster1296

4 ай бұрын

@@Peye-pv4cbI am saving up for a battery to go with the PV I already have.

@DavidPlayfair

4 ай бұрын

Plenty of 'shade' in the UK, yet the grass still grows!

@bardz0sz

4 ай бұрын

@@robertfonovic3551such bs, how did you come up with that one

This is encouraging - I just hope enough attention is paid to the flora and fauna in the desert, which has been in balance for eons. People ask why solar panels are not all that common in the Sunshine State. Hurricanes and daily severe thunderstorms are a big issue. Panels sit just above the shingles, capture wind and are vulnerable to being ripped off - just ask my neighbor. Also, our roof's warranty would be voided. So, I'm glad they can be implemented somewhere.

@michaelnurse9089

4 ай бұрын

Tesla's roof product could be the answer.

@greeneyesms

4 ай бұрын

@@michaelnurse9089 One of the issues is that any puncture through the roofing material, such as a satellite dish, voids the warranty. We just spent $63,000 on a metal roof on a 5 yo old house. Thanks, Hurricane Ian.

Roof top solar panels (including EVs solar film) vs grid solar... I go roof top when given a choice. However, there will always be a need for grid power. Solar panel shading land with agricultural benefits and solar panel shading reservoirs/canals to reduce evaporation are both great dual use benefits. The 2050 Net Zero carbon goal is looking more achievable all the time, primarily due to the incredible advances in solar and battery tech.

Good to see sheep grazing underneath those panels. Best of both worlds. But I just wonder how the sheepdogs will manage to round up the flocks! :)

Encouraging and informative update on solar power.

Thanks so much Sam

Thanks Viking. More visibility for Agrivoltaic deployments is a very good thing. I suspect the quality of the soils in their projects will also see improve over time.

Solar Energy!! And I love it when green grows under, and sheep eat that.

Bloody great news cheers mate

Sam, thank you for this wonderful news. I hope you and your family are having an enjoyable weekend. Sheila Mink in New Mexico

You say 870Mw is the world's largest solar park? Nope, not even top 10! Visual Capitalist shows that India’s Bhadla Solar Park is the world’s largest solar park as of the time of the dataset. It has the capacity to generate 2,245 megawatts of electricity alone. Mexico’s Villanueva Solar Park is the largest solar plant in the Americas with an 828 megawatt capacity, while the Copper Mountain Solar Facility (802 MW) in Nevada and the Mount Signal Solar Park (794 MW) in California are the largest plants in the United States. Meaning, Bhadla's existing park is almost 3 times larger than the park under construction in this video

@Botoburst

4 ай бұрын

He said by the end of this year it will be among the largest and how much energy storage do those have if any.

@RiverMersey

4 ай бұрын

@@Botoburst yes, I'm aware of that. Bhadla Solar Park does indeed use batteries. However, the present capacity is unknown. Another comparison is that the park in this video is listed as 4400 acres whereas Bhadla Solar Park is presently 14,000 acres

Entire Australia contains plenty of such deserts able to be harversted by solar power. The problem is Australia cannot export that energy. If internal consumption will not need so much energy it can be used for smelting Aluminium.

@joebloggs6131

4 ай бұрын

Not smelting aluminium, smelting iron ore to make our own steel. At least that's what Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest wants to do with the ex-SunCable project in NT

@nevco8774

4 ай бұрын

@@joebloggs6131 Yes, Australia is the largest Iron ore exporter to China. The final product, steel, is much more expensive than the ore. Besides it can open some manufacturing locally.

@robertfonovic3551

4 ай бұрын

​@@joebloggs6131proof that Twiggie smokes crack.

@markharmon4963

4 ай бұрын

Yes, embodied energy is stored energy in the form of a product/material.

@mike160543

4 ай бұрын

Make ammonia with electrolytic hydrogen band atmospheric nitrogen. The global production of ammonia was estimated to have amounted to a total of 150 million metric tons in 2023.. Virtually all from fossil fuels waiting to be displaced.

Thanks

Love your episodes, filled with facts.

It is right next to the solar salt generator that is a money pit...

Nice one America

great video Sam.

@electricviking

4 ай бұрын

Thanks!

I think solar panels should be personal. Why should we depend on these huge corporations for our electricity and what they want to charge for it?

Excellent and informative video about the largest US clean energy transition, solar farm with 1900000 PV panels and 121000 batteries, plus 98 miles transmission lines. Working 1000 workers for 2 years is around 2=52*5*8*1000=4160000 hr, so if an hr job will cost the minimum 25$/hr the installation costly arrive 104 million dollar and if 1 kwh on wholesale will be 0.05$/kwh then the plant must sell 2.08 TWh to get the installation cost. What are the capital cost invested for 1.9 million panels, the cost of 121000 batteries, the cost of 98 miles transmission lines, what is the lease on 4600 acres land, what is the bank loan and interes, and what payoff time has this solar power plant?

The US has a massive available capacity to build solar panels. They a high number of high radiation lands in Arizona, Texas, Nevada, California and New Mexico.

The US also has gigawatt hours worth of solar that's not even connected to the grid yet. These build outs are crazy.

@robertfonovic3551

4 ай бұрын

What's even crazier is that China in 2023 approved another 114 GW of coal power station production. This is additional to the 107 GW already in construction. Thar pretty much wipes out any of CO2 reducuctions worldwide in the last 3 yrs. How do like them apples Eco Warriors. ? Source is Reuters and a crying John Kerry yesterday. 😅😅

Era of solar power is here

These are what we need, especially in countries close to the equator where the sun is een for many more hours. They will work anywhere and will provide a lot of energy especially when doubled up with massive battery storage options. This is all good news.

California at times has too much solar and wind energy and actually pays Arizona to take this excess. Thanks California. I personally live off grid and have not had an electric bill for 20 years.

@GuyIncognito764

4 ай бұрын

That makes no sense. You can just curtail solar. Why pay someone to take free energy.

@junkerzn7312

4 ай бұрын

It's just a ping-pong game between solar and energy storage. More solar is added, more energy storage is added to soak up peak excesses. Then more solar is added, and more storage again, etc. As the whole thing gets built up Some curtailment is bound to happen, and does. And sometimes exports go negative, for a multitude of reasons including needing to keep the grid balanced and having sufficient generation margin to deal with spot generation or line trips. Though I will say that is happening less often now as other states have their own heat waves and wind up needing to import (positive rates in that situation, obviously, not negative), and more storage continues to get added to the California grid. We're up to 6.6GW of (battery) power (up from less than 1GW 4 years ago), and well over 30GWh of storage (can't immediately find the reference but that's the ballpark), and that is projected to rise to 52GW by 2045 and I don't even know how much storage that will represent but it's gonna be pretty insane.

@dzcav3

4 ай бұрын

@@junkerzn7312 All the grid batteries in the US could power the grid for a few minutes. I forget the exact number, but it's in the single digits.

@junkerzn7312

4 ай бұрын

@@dzcav3 And yet the batteries have had a huge positive impact on grid stability, massively reduced congestion transmission lines, and removed the need to a whole lot of very, very dirty peaker plants in the state. And fortunately California is not trying to power the whole U.S. grid. Fancy that! Your little missives just demonstrate your vast ignorance of how the grid actually works, and how renewables and storage are quickly destroying old monopolies and grift. That's particularly true in Australia, by the way, where fossil generators are having an incredibly difficult time gaming the grid like they used to. The batteries react just too damn fast for them to be able to create artificial emergencies with their intentional destabilizations of the grid. -Matt

121000 batteries to store the peak output for less than 4 hours. A completely different technology is needed to store a realistic grid scale quantity of electric power

@lepidoptera9337

4 ай бұрын

Battery storage is for rapid high load demand. That's the current problem that needs to be solved to stabilize the grids because solar and wind can show intermittencies at the minute time scale. The next longer time scale is four to six hours in summer as AC demand continues even after sunset in states that have warm climates. There is also a mismatch between demand and supply in the early morning hours as businesses are opening before solar has sufficient production capacity. This intra-day storage can be easily met with batteries. The much harder part will be to cover weekly and seasonal supply-demand mismatches, especially for heating.

@mike160543

4 ай бұрын

@@lepidoptera9337 Quite right! If solar and wind are to replace fossil for heavy industry We need to have affordable storage for weeks. Talk of hydrogen and ammonia is a symptom of the lack of away to store significant amounts of electric power

@lepidoptera9337

4 ай бұрын

@@mike160543 Yep. I don't believe that a seasonal storage solution has emerged, yet. I am not sure about hydrogen. It has very poor physical properties for energy storage. Ammonia and some hydrocarbons are more likely in my opinion. I can imagine molten metal storage. Sodium and aluminum are literally dirt cheap. For thermal storage molten salt, concrete and different kinds of rocks like basalt and granite are feasible. We could literally use old construction debris as heat storage medium.

@ronblack7870

4 ай бұрын

no just build more batteries . there is also other technology for batteries that can be used that is cheaper but has low density. low density should not be a big problem for land based storage.

Instead of bunches of batteries all grouped together, which make a great target for bad actors. Spread those batteries throughout of the area to minimize them all being taken down at once. omt, batteries don't have to be above ground.....

Yeah, I'm #999 👍

Instead of the massive amounts of storage batteries, use the electricity to pump water back to the top of a hydroelectric dam. Greener way of storing the energy without the carbon footprints of producing batteries, all the wiring, maintenance, etc, etc.

@ahaveland

4 ай бұрын

Only two problems with that: 1. You need mountains, and lots and lots of water. Not many hydroelectric dams in a flat desert. 2. Pumped hydro round trip efficiency is about 70% - much less than Li battery charging at >99%

@imfloridano5448

4 ай бұрын

A gud idea for energy efficient societies

@bfree6197

4 ай бұрын

@@ahaveland I thought this was about going green??? You cut out all the mining, maintenance, batteries will need recycling, recycling centers... a few pumps have much smaller carbon footprints and are much more affordable, cheaper and easier to maintain, without all the environmental impact My state produces more electricity than needed. Excess is sold to other states... it travels just fine. Solar don't need to be on site

@ahaveland

4 ай бұрын

@@bfree6197 Yes, hydro is good in rainy mountainous areas but location options are still limited. Pumps are useless in flat deserts! Materials for batteries are only mined once. Mining can be done without fossil fuels, which is why more and more of them are building their own solar farms. The big bucket wheels are electric. Recycling can be closed and totally renewably powered. Yes, solar travels fine over HVDC, though those transmission lines are expensive.

@bfree6197

4 ай бұрын

You don't move the dam... you send solar electricity to pumps at an existing dam. Power lines are more permanent, cheaper environmentaly friendly than mining, manufacturing batteries and recycling them. Without the environmental impact. Large transmission power lines are already everywhere, most infrastructure probably already exists. Go watch some videos on the mining processes, the wasteland left behind, they are terrible for the environment. Their's nothing green about them... regardless of an electric wheel

These projects look like lakes when driving by

The day will come when electricity will be so cheap that families will have so much more assets to spend. Great for the economy. I have solar panels on my roof in SF and often my usage is zero. Yet the utility company has a way to tax me for what ever reason to make money. Maybe it's time to go off grid and be done with my utility company except there are days when the solar doesn't make enough power

@dzcav3

4 ай бұрын

You just described the major issue with solar. It relies on other dispatchable sources because of its intermittency.

@polska905

4 ай бұрын

In 25 years your solar system will end up in a landfill and you get to do it all over again, how environmentally friendly is that?

How big is an acre? Know anything about hectares, mate? 😮

@robertfonovic3551

4 ай бұрын

Are acres what you get if kicked in the balls?😊

@johnmeeks7320

4 ай бұрын

he knows about Ha but lots of yanks watch this, they dont know

When your neighbor's solar panels play hide and seek during a storm, it’s not a game you want to win! 😂🌪️

👍👍

This is great news. This is the future of electricity generation. However, solar agrivoltaics is a better use of the land. Even though this giant solar power plant is built in the desert, it still destroys complex ecosystems.

Build baby build USA🇺🇸😎

Cool, turn all the deserts to solar farms and use Hydrogen as a battery to store energy.😊

I know what you’re saying but there is a lot of farmers that wouldn’t let cables be run across their land and a few who don’t like solar panels on the land either most likely they haven’t seen the same things about solar panels that we have this wasn’t the first time I had heard about this not only growing plants under the solar panels but also grazing livestock under them

@fjalics

4 ай бұрын

That's all true, but thing with solar, is while it costs less when you scale it up, it scales down pretty good too, because pannels are made by the hundreds of millions or some such, and so it can be put in a lot of places. If one farmer doesn't want it, another one will. You can even put it on roofs. Think of how difficult it is to build a nuke.

@nevco8774

4 ай бұрын

It clearly looks like the project is located in desert, on some federal lands, in which no farmer would have been interested.

@fjalics

4 ай бұрын

@@nevco8774 True, but we are getting some significant solar farms in Ohio, and we have no desert.

All manufactured in China adding to their massive national debt and annual trade deficit I believe now is $900 billion, with the local coal fired power stations no money was sent over to China, the sad thing is this is never going to end, the drain of US money to buy Chinese manufactured solar panels.

How do they clean the dust off the panels? The wind blows out there.

@paramveerdhoot6415

4 ай бұрын

Robots, they float along the panels and sweep them.

@robertfonovic3551

4 ай бұрын

​@@paramveerdhoot6415I don't know whether to laugh or cry at your.???

@robertfonovic3551

4 ай бұрын

The could employ people with feather dusters.😅😅

@ravenkk4816

4 ай бұрын

@@robertfonovic3551why through, it cheaper with machine

@DavidPlayfair

4 ай бұрын

One the video clips in this video does appear to show an automated cleaning machine. Robot?

Calif has a lot of solar panels but its electricity price is too high. Why?

☀️

Still way cheaper than a nuke.

World's largest solar farm is currently in NT, was the SunCable project 17-20GWh per day of output

@robertfonovic3551

4 ай бұрын

It doesn't exist.

@joebloggs6131

4 ай бұрын

Oh, it exists alright, just not connected to anything at the present time

@johnmeeks7320

4 ай бұрын

on paper then it was scrapped@@joebloggs6131

Area wise, a nuclear plant would take less, but just over all "spare area" we still have a ton we could use for solar panels. From roof tops to using solar as more of a grid - there is ton of places we can stick them and connect. Batteries are still a MAJOR cost though... until new tech comes out using cheaper materials - its the only down side to renewables. Esp for home/local grids that can already afford the panels - but dont wanna see their money wash away during the night. Batteries alone could still off set something like 20% of the power grid as most of our power in the US is just turn into heat/waste when not in use during the day.

@lepidoptera9337

4 ай бұрын

Cost per cycle is what counts and that can be reduced greatly with battery technologies that have longer lifetime. Once batteries reach the 10,000 cycle mark, their cost impact becomes marginal. We are almost there.

@ronblack7870

4 ай бұрын

nuclear plants take many more years to construct . this took 2 years to produce similar power to a reactor during the day. a nuclear plant takes at least 6 -10 years so could produce 3 -4 of these in that time. also the solar uses no water and can actually help the ecological environment

🔌🔌Very Well Done🔌🔌

It might be the largest solar farm but by my reckoning 875MW is significantly less than 2.6GW

@alexishart1989

4 ай бұрын

I just ran the numbers and you're right!

@Furtivo95

4 ай бұрын

Yes but at what cost? And how many decades more would one need to wait? By then you can have 20 fields surpassing 2.6GW rendering it obsolete.

@stanleytolle416

4 ай бұрын

The batteries will help with the capacity factor but that eight hundred or so max is multiplied by .2 to get the true output for the whole day. Still would take ten or more of these farms to come close what Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant outputs on 200ac of land.

@Furtivo95

4 ай бұрын

@@stanleytolle416 in theory the numbers look strong but the fact is even the biggest supporters of nuclear will vote it down in their own backyard 10/10. Reason : real estate values will collapse and banks don’t like that. Also the cost of building, maintaining them is extraordinary. With millions of rooftops we can do quite a lot and we can localize power putting it in the hands of the people, not the politicians.

@yggdrasil9039

4 ай бұрын

@@alexishart1989 😅

Well, I'd rather be downwind from a solar power plant than and oil distillery or nuclear power plant.

I have to wonder about the heat generated by the dark panels when the sun hits them, where does all that heat go? Could that also be harnessed in some way? Just an idea!

@user-de1fu4vi9s

4 ай бұрын

Real issue with heat still, yes. This is why everyone is watching the efficiency numbers so closely. 33% means that “black” surface is converting 1/3 of light into electricity and 2/3 into heat. We still need breakthroughs in solar cell technology too.

Amazing. But like d US national debt, when we gonna also tackle reducing average household power consumption? Supervised fridges etc these days

@stevencole7331

4 ай бұрын

America has extremely inefficient homes . The waste is enormous

@robertfonovic3551

4 ай бұрын

​@@phillipbanes5484Any house older than 20 yrs is energy inefficient compared to modern homes.

@jsanders100

4 ай бұрын

@@phillipbanes5484do you need to be American to look up energy consumption in the USA?

@alexs9137

4 ай бұрын

@@phillipbanes5484 I am. Living in Europe at the moment though... Can confirm that houses in the US are mostly a joke.

@stevencole7331

4 ай бұрын

@@phillipbanes5484 you can look it up . Compared to Europeans Americans fall way behind on home efficiency. I believe the reason was American cheap energy . There was a time it was really cheap and all electric houses were a common place . Europeans mostly struggled with costly energy so when things cost more you do things to conserve . Now building your own home you can choose to have a very efficient house which will cost more upfront but will save you over time like solar panels . Now developers / homebuilders will mostly do what the minimal standard that code requires and that's well bellow European standards .

Since we are pulling energy out of the sun, I wonder what the effect is on the climate in that local area. I have been there a few times and it's fairly dry desert. The shade provided should cool the area . Then converting energy into electric power should remove more that would be absorbed into the sand as heat ( unless it's all reflected). Will that cool the day time Temps on the base a few degrees? Anyone study this an have. Facts? Just wondering.

@lepidoptera9337

4 ай бұрын

Probably not in a relevant way. We are artificially increasing absorption but are then removing more energy through the grid and through the radiation these panels give off during the night time. Overall it's probably mostly a wash unless we start to actively engineer the panels as efficient IR reflectors. The shade does seem to reduce evaporation, though, so plants will grow longer and better underneath panels. Eventually we will probably need this effect to offset the increasingly more arid conditions in the South of the US due to global warming. I have seen one science study that estimated the cooling in the Sahara due to increase in heating during the daytime, which I believe draws cold, moist air in from the ocean (we are creating an artificial circulation heat engine, I believe). The article was mostly negative about the impact, if I remember correctly. Even million square kilometer patches hardly seem to make enough of a climate impact to change rainfall substantially.

always have to add in a tesla plug - what a fan boy (oops - tesla viking) !😉

How do you invest in this sector Viking?

@robertfonovic3551

4 ай бұрын

Talk to an alcoholic at your local pub 😊

Sam: audio level is very low lately, this one also.

@1:28 - just 875 mega watts (or 0.875 GW)? China will have 1.3TW (1300 GW) of solar and wind power by the end of 2024

@junkerzn7312

4 ай бұрын

Well, China installs more solar yearly than the U.S. has installed over its entire history. Just goes to show how far behind we are. That said, not sure why you are comparing the output of a single project to the output of an entirely country. California as a whole generated 13-14GW from solar today for a period of roughly 9 hours. Roughly 117 GWh today. And batteries spread a portion of that energy over another 6-7 hours when the sun isn't around.

@robertfonovic3551

4 ай бұрын

And about 700GW of coal plants😊

The future is coming! Great clean energy!

India is building 30000MW solar park.😢😢

you compared Apple and Banana, the one in China has 2GW of capacity compared to what you said 875MW for the American one. You compared power generation capacity against storage capacity, not relevant IMO

I doubt someone could walk around a 4,600 acre project in half a day.

@frankcoffey

4 ай бұрын

At my age I wouldn't even make it. 😲

@830118

4 ай бұрын

4600 acres 18615539 square meters or 4.314 by 4.314 assuming a perfect square. That would make the total perimeter 17.256km. Walking between 4-6km per hour would take 3-4 hours. So yes it is very possible to do it in half a day.

Walking around it in a day is not big. When you can’t drive around it in a day will be big. Really big!

@lepidoptera9337

4 ай бұрын

That's the kind of powerplant that could supply the entire continent with energy. ;-)

We need DC power grids

@Rabs73

4 ай бұрын

DC is not efficient for long distance transmission. It's why Tesla invented AC

@peterbetts8740

4 ай бұрын

@@Rabs73 You got it the wrong way round. DC is best for long distance. And DC cables can be buried. AC was adopted because it makes it easy to change the voltage and isn't quite so dangerous if you touch the wires.

The amount of copper wiring involved is one downside of solar.

@lepidoptera9337

4 ай бұрын

We have plenty of copper in the ground... our old telecommunications cables can all be replaced by fiber. Apart from that... aluminum makes for great conductors.

@Botoburst

4 ай бұрын

Good for my copper stock.

What is the cost of this solar plant?

@jsanders100

4 ай бұрын

I can assure you it’s far cheaper than nuclear

@velisvideos6208

4 ай бұрын

Not cheaper than nuclear anyway. The whole Edwards Sanborn project is budgeted at 2 billion dollars. It's effective average output will be around 160 MW, so the cost / kW will be about 12000 dollars. One can easily build nuclear for less than that, except in the UK.

Again you have to put this in some context as even a giant farm like this doesn't put out that much power. 2 million panels has a peak potential of only about 2-5 million depending on the time of year. Grand Coolee Dam by iteself puts out 57 million. Combined Solar, wind in the USA total under 6% of power generated in the country. The actual rate of Solar expansion is declining even with larger farms; because as the base gets larger it takes a great number to even incease by 10% over the prior year.

@chrismd00

4 ай бұрын

Wrong and wrong

@litestuffllc7249

4 ай бұрын

@@chrismd00 Oh so smart ; can you google anything? Im sure you can check my figures for both the Dam's output and Sam here presented the max out put of this solar array - so Your not just ignorant and wrong but too dull to actually show anything to prove your point - right? Big mouth.

Badderies?? Do you mean batteries?

All those solar panels cant even power all the houses in kern county? Im very skeptical that the amount of land use is worth the trade off? Just build a nuclear power plant in a tiny fraction of the land use.

@junkerzn7312

4 ай бұрын

Then perhaps you should take a look at how land is used in the U.S. and tell us what you think of it. Land used for solar is in the noise.

@TheEvilmooseofdoom

4 ай бұрын

It can take a decade or more just to get the permitting for a nuclear reactor, and the nuclear industry is not exactly cost effective.

@dzcav3

4 ай бұрын

@@TheEvilmooseofdoom Permitting is a government issue. Nuclear, like solar is very capital intensive (large upfront costs), but conserves land and lasts several times longer than solar. So you only have to build it once every eighty years, instead of every ten years like solar. Multiply the cost of solar times eight and compare costs.

The Liberal Party in Australia is opposing renewable energy being built on prime farmland and oppose transmission lines traversing farms and forests. Many farmers have joined their campaign and there have been protests outside of parliament house in Canberra. It will be an election issue coming up as the Liberal Party do not support renewable energy and farmers have their own self-interests at heart rather than what is best for the entire country. Many people find solar panels and wind turbines ok to look at, but others find them a terrible blot on the landscape and don't want them built in areas where they live!

@blackknight4996

4 ай бұрын

The result of governments run by people who know nothing.

@junkerzn7312

4 ай бұрын

Compared with what exactly? The blot of mining in Australia?

@dzcav3

4 ай бұрын

Funny thing. Everybody wants wind and solar installations (and the additional transmission lines) -- built FAR AWAY from where they live. Everyone who advocates for windmills should be required to live near one (or more), with the transmission lines going directly over their house.

@johnmeeks7320

4 ай бұрын

LNP want their fossil fuel mates to keep donating to them thats why

Watched a cool video today by Ziroth called "Why Solid Carbon Batteries Are Taking Over". This company Antora has developed a solid graphite battery for storing heat at 2000º C for industrial processes - like ceramics, cement cooking, steel mills etc. Ideally the battery is heated with excess green power from wind and solar. The battery also has cells that convert the intense infrared generated by the graphite (it glows white hot) directly into electricity if needed. Seems like giant solar farms like these would be a perfect pairing with these new batteries.

@TheEvilmooseofdoom

4 ай бұрын

Taking over? How many Gwh of batteries have they produced? How many are actually deployed?

@robertfonovic3551

4 ай бұрын

​@@TheEvilmooseofdoomnone and none.

@Hybridog

4 ай бұрын

@@TheEvilmooseofdoom The title of the video is not the good part.

@newyorker641

4 ай бұрын

​@@TheEvilmooseofdoom Miraculous battery technology is popping up every 5 minutes and will disrupt and destroy everything we have seen so far... Real battery prices seem to flat out over the past few years, the time of big improvements seems over to me. Maybe sodium ion will be a bit cheaper but it has to be proven in reality.

I like the energy produced cleanly but they've ruined some amazing stark environments. It's become commonplace to venture out and not be able to see a natural view.

@lepidoptera9337

4 ай бұрын

I heard you say that last week about 900 million acres of farmland in the US. Oh, wait... you never said that about farmland. :-)

Nevada dessert would be the best place for this. Iowa corn farms would make great solar plants.

NO. Desert of Rajasthan, India has 2.3GW Sorry US.

Just imagine how much clean energy could be produced if a nuclear plant big enough to fill this area was built instead.

@ahaveland

4 ай бұрын

Wanna pay 30 billion dollars and wait 15 years for it?

@muskrat3291

4 ай бұрын

Of the 253 nuclear plants that were originally ordered between 1953 and 2008, 121 (48 percent) were canceled before completion. Of the 132 plants that were built, 21 were permanently shut down due to reliability or cost problems, while another 27% completely failed for a year or more at least once. Nuclear power is an industry that has proven that it can deliver an ever more expensive product and take longer to produce it. If energy were based on market forces, the nuclear industry would have been out of business long ago.

@TheEvilmooseofdoom

4 ай бұрын

And then the billions and decades to remediate when the nuclear plant is shut down. You know less than you think you do.

@dzcav3

4 ай бұрын

@@muskrat3291 You're using Al Gore as your source (via Wikipedia)? I have a bridge I could sell you real cheap.

@rkadowns

4 ай бұрын

@@TheEvilmooseofdoom Yeah. I'm pretty stupid to think photovoltaics won't do the job. Seriously. Nuclear fission is the only true solution. We'll never get to nuclear fusion without carbon based fuels and fission. Modular molten salt reactors. I know more than you assume. Be happy dreaming about your solar utopia.

They should use the Nevada desert - literally hundreds of miles of open, unused space..

And it's still only good for under 3% of total power used...DURING 5 HOURS OF THE DAY.

@lepidoptera9337

4 ай бұрын

In California it was almost 20% of all electricity generation in 2022 and growing rapidly. By the end of the decade it will probably be the largest fraction of the electricity mix.

@billcichoke2534

4 ай бұрын

@@lepidoptera9337 No, it was 20% of NAMEPLATE INSTALLED CAPACITY. Solar and wind accounted for less than 5% of all GENERATED electricity.

@junkerzn7312

4 ай бұрын

​@@billcichoke2534 You know you could just look this stuff up. We're talking California here, not projecting to the whole country or world-wide. California's total electricity generation on a yearly basis is over 60% renewable now, with over 40% of that coming from solar and wind (mostly solar). 10% from hydro, and 10% from nuclear. Roughly. The remaining 40% is mostly from natural gas. Other states have varying amounts of renewable generation. Texas is a big one too. Some states have zero.

@lepidoptera9337

4 ай бұрын

@@billcichoke2534 Good try, but it's just not true.

@billcichoke2534

4 ай бұрын

@@junkerzn7312 Wow...I guess the info from Portland GAS & Electric and Idaho Power is totally off, since we still send bunches of OUR natural gas and hydro power to Cal. And we're not having blackouts like they are. And we're showing their solar and wind as GENERATING less than 5%. Look up the difference between INSTALLED capacity and ACTUAL GENERATION. Solar and wind underperform MASSIVELY, and are so erratic and intermittent they can't even tip the scales as a source of PEAKER power.

Great to see that something the sun gives us for free is being passed on almost for free. The energy industry used to be money for (really, really) old rope. Now, with (sequestered?) carbon-based thermal storage coming on-stream for commercial & industrial use - the future is looking - almost free! Would love a carbon thermal storage system of the house but maybe the insurance company wouldn't be so keen.

A lot is being said about how Viking's channel is hosted by none other than the King Vike himself. Crushing it as usual

LG and BYD batteries?????? WTF makes me sick did they try asking Tesla??? A real piss off

@junkerzn7312

4 ай бұрын

Tesla megapacks are in the mix too. In anycase, Tesla doesn't make nearly enough grid-scale storage to satisfy demand yet, and won't for quite a while despite how quickly their energy business is growing.

@roger_is_red

4 ай бұрын

@@junkerzn7312 interesting and thanks for your input

I love to see the animals grazing under the panels that is so much better than the rock hard dessert we had before. Now they need to add some of those crescent shaped water catching system that are being used to regenerate land in the Sahara desert

Seems like fusion is dead

@TheEvilmooseofdoom

4 ай бұрын

It certainly has a ways (and likely billions) to go.

@lepidoptera9337

4 ай бұрын

Was it ever alive? ;-)

How is this good for the environment? How is this not increasing global temperature by heating up the surface?

@lepidoptera9337

4 ай бұрын

It doesn't change the albedo of the land all that much. 20% of the light absorbed in the panels flows out in form of electricity (or is stored in the batteries) and during the night the panels are radiating IR very efficiently, cooling the air around them stronger than the original surface would have. Overall it's probably mostly a wash. In agricultural applications the shade of the panels reduces evaporation, leading to longer growth periods in spring and summer and allowing species that are less adapted to arid conditions to thrive. Solar shading in agriculture will probably go a long way to offset the effects of global warming on farming.

@wheelofcheese100

4 ай бұрын

I agree, we need to get rid of surface heat 😡 😁

@user-fb8jb5yi6g

4 ай бұрын

@@lepidoptera9337 clever farming. Good recap. I'm all for building out the grid. I just think nuclear is the way to go. They have new reactors now that use spent fuel from older reactors that can generate enough power for 100 years. Called "Fast reactors". Fusion reactors will be a game changer.

@lepidoptera9337

4 ай бұрын

@@wheelofcheese100 One could imagine panels that are actually cooling the land by reflecting most of the IR radiation and by having an emission peak for IR wavelength that correspond to the Planck peak at 300K. That would reduce heat load by 30% or so. It does come with some efficiency loss and the production is more expensive, of course. Other possible combinations involve solar and thermal desalination.

@TheEvilmooseofdoom

4 ай бұрын

It intercepts light that would just be heating the surface and turning some of that energy into electricity. Do you think the sun wouldn't be shining there if there were not solar panels?

How much carbon was used to make the materials, transport the materials, make the panels, build the factory, transport them to the site, assemble them, transport the workers to the site, then remove everything in 20 years, transport the scrap, try to recycle them?

@CobConstantz

4 ай бұрын

Less than any other form of generation

This wouldn't have happened under Trump! 👍👏🙄😖😭🤣

That is not sustainable in an every day working class way. The crews they will have to keep on hand at all times will be huge and you know how rich people feel about employees. They don't want any. Finding a bad battery will be a massive electrical feat. Oh well it will be a great buffer for 20 years while they build out wind and nuclear and possibly - finally make fusion work well enough to generate energy on a massive scale. That and thorium are the future for both planet seeding, space and ocean travel, and energy for humanities rich people. Eat the rich. Make a better world.

@junkerzn7312

4 ай бұрын

Huh? Where'd you get that load of nonsense from?

@TheEvilmooseofdoom

4 ай бұрын

@@junkerzn7312 Most get it spoon fed to them by bigger fools some just make it up.

@polska905

4 ай бұрын

​@@junkerzn7312in 25 years all this ewaste will end up in a landfill.

Jai Hinduja. India is becoming the Safe hub of Supply chains without using slave labor for the Collective West led by the US. As such, more and more of the solar panels and batteries that are required for US solar farms will be supplied by India,

@TheEvilmooseofdoom

4 ай бұрын

I had heard India was big on solar, but what is their battery output?

And how much co2 has been generated making all that lot? And will continue to be generated as worn out/damaged/failed parts need to be replaced?? Anf like all these projects, I don't see any kind of realistic firewalling (or even distancing) between those giant batteries...

@bobwallace9753

4 ай бұрын

The question you should be asking is what is the total carbon footprint of solar compared to coal and natural gas. The answer is solar's (and wind's) carbon footprint is a tiny fraction of fossil fuel.

@sbl17jackson37

4 ай бұрын

Solar power plants do take up a lot of land, but they are still much cheaper and cleaner for our environment than dirty coal or natural gas. Remember these solar panels can produce electricity for 25 years, with minimal maintenance, compared to a dirty coal or natural gas plant that requires continuous mining or fracking.

@bobwallace9753

4 ай бұрын

@@sbl17jackson37 More than 25 years. Our oldest panels are well over 30 years old and have held up very well. Most failures from early panels were the result of leaky, corroding connection boxes and panel delamination. Technology has improved a lot over the last 3+ decades. The DOE reported that panels manufactured post 2000 should lose between 0.5% and 2% output per year with the highest loses in areas of major wind and/or solar loading as well as high UV exposure. A panel that degrades 2% per year would still produce 50% as much electricity as when new after 25 years and, depending on the value of the site, might be worth replacing. A panel losing 0.5% per year would still be producing 75% as much power as new after 50 years.

What a waste of space.

@willm5814

4 ай бұрын

I don’t think so

@willm5814

4 ай бұрын

You know what really is a waste of space though? Oil spills.

@dustinstorey6779

4 ай бұрын

Your brain is a waste of space.

@clroger4

4 ай бұрын

@@dustinstorey6779 nice intelligent response...as usual from The Green Tards

@dustinstorey6779

4 ай бұрын

@@clroger4 I was just trying to speak a language you understand.

Just so dumb. Massive waste of resources and land area for SFA energy. Nuclear would provide that in

@lepidoptera9337

4 ай бұрын

So when are you going to invest all of YOUR money in a nuclear power plant? That I want to see. ;-)

@polska905

4 ай бұрын

​@@lepidoptera9337moron

@markharmon4963

4 ай бұрын

It seems to be working. Why is this project attracting investment and nuclear plants not...in the USA? Are the shade farmers lying?

@jsanders100

4 ай бұрын

And then….. come the decommissioning costs and contamination. People like you NEVER mention that.

@ulyks

4 ай бұрын

Nuclear plants also require huge amounts of steel and concrete. And sure they use less land but this land is a desert or near desert. There is plenty of that type of land. And remember, this land cannot be used for nuclear power because those require a river or sea for emergency cooling.

I think solar panels should be personal. Why should we depend on these huge corporations for our electricity and what they want to charge for it?