*A correction:* When I compared solar to nuclear and coal power, it would have been more fair to use the MWh metric instead of peak power in MW. Reason being that MWh would account for energy solar losses at night, and losses during sunrise/set. With that noted, the largest nuclear/ coal plants still have a far greater output when averaged out. Apologies for this oversight.
This belongs in the video you demagogic a...! You're really doing damage to the world by telling people solar power was any good (except for corner cases). Over here in germany we spend 30 billion EUR per year for the energy transition. And it only lead to the highest energy costs in Europe but not to lower CO2 emissions. For that kind of money, we could afford 500.000 extra teachers, doctors and policemen. What a beautiful world would that be? Also nuclear is not only CO2 neutral, it comes with less fatalities and less pollution. A fact that people won't understand beacause of a lack of education. Just google "deaths per twh" or think of the high energy density of nuclear fuel (a million times that of coal) which leads to only small mining being required.
I love how unbiased this video is. Not just glorifying solar energy, but taking all things into consideration, like the energy storage. And I also love how much research and analysis has been done to produce it. I know all the information presented in it can be trusted. Dagogo, you are an amazing person.
ColdFusion A look at the state of the art in solar power plants - a silent mover in the utility energy space! As a side note, a lot of our energy does come from natural gas power stations but their output, on average is far less than that of both coal and nuclear so I left it out. Anyways, Enjoy! PS: Bitcoin and Blockchain videos still in the works.
I still remember the time when you had just 10k subscribers..I have always been your fan Cold Fusion..! You are an inspiration to all content creators in the Tech and Science space..You have inspired me to create my own Channel..! :)
Dams provide water for hydro electric energy. Solar panels should be floating over the large man made reservoir (dam water ) . During the day solar energy is to be used to pump water from a lower point into the reservoir. During the night the water is allowed to flow down producing energy. This solves the energy storage problems and can form a closed system
Dams effect the environment.. Many dams in the US are being taken down as they have started realising the adverse effect it has.. This can be a temporary solution but creation of more dams should be out of the question..
@@AlexAlcyone chill out. Take the time to see if you are smart enough for one of those tests in which every word that is written is spelled wrong but if you are smart you will have zero problems understand what is written .
Love that mainstream media is starting to discover and positively report on Solar power. Thank you! Love your channel. Happy to help you in the future with connecting the dots for solar and Storage. I've been in the industry for over a decade, even worked at the largest solar panel manufacturer, and have been podcasting about it for over 3 yrs. Great job. Very balanced view and really appreciated the positive spin comparing against nuclear and coal.
My country is 95% dependent on fossil fuels in terms of national revenue. We've been complacent since the discovery of oil here in the early 1900s. The people have been spoiled with the easy wealth that come by. The (slow) rise of clean energy will eventually eat us out if the mindset of most of our people stays the same. We've been lazy. Since last year, the countries that have been purchasing our natural products in bulk decided to cut down the amount that they buy, not even by much, and the budget cut throughout the country has already been affecting how the government sector operates. Normally it was easy for us to request for this and that but now the office can't even provide us with basic essentials that we need to get them with our own money. We've been trying to promote tourism in the country for over a decade but the effort has been lacklustre and pretty much minimal. There's a silver lining though, because of all the things I mentioned, the younger generation has been working hard to succeed in life, start-ups are starting to appear here and there. These youngsters are also improving their quality of work wherever they are hired. I cannot believe it is that easy. All we needed was a little slap on the face to wake up. :D
I already did. amongst others "6:10 this has clearly nothing to do with moor's law and has NOTTING to do with relation to time. you can clearly read on the x axis "cumulative module shipment". seriously, whats wrong with this guy? what sort of education does he have that he can't even read properly?" "when it's cloudy you still get ca. 80% of max solar output. does this guy always talk nonsense? in every video these is some bullshit."
One current problem with solar vs traditional generation is that solar causes instability in the power gird. Solar is a inertia vampire (there is no kinetic energy in the system like a large rotation generator or turbine to be able to deal with fluctuations) This can cause larger frequency deviations from the standard 60/50Hz or cause loss of synchronism in the system. There is a similar issue with wind because the AC/AC converters decouple the rotating mass from the grid. Thus you not only need a energy storage system like the power pack for solar to work but it could also require a fly wheel solution to store energy. The battery pack is a long term energy storage but you need to also be able to deal with instantaneous power changes in the grid.
Large utility scale storage, V2G and Powerwalls will mittigate this problem of internittance.. (which is more in our heads than a reality, sun is very predictable, 95% of the time there is wind, useable for windturbines) ... The electronics that go with windturbines and solar panels already do a great job of providing clean 50 or 60hz, AC elektricity in whatever voltage they require. Those problems have been solved decades ago! Batteries work much quicker than any other source to deal with the fluctuating demand.. Look at what happened in Australia when Tesla installed 100Mw battery storage: interestingengineering.com/tesla-battery-installed-in-south-australia-saved-the-region-40-million-in-its-first-year
Perfect solution for Australia where there is huge amounts of room for installing solar plants! C'mon Australian Government, do something unusual and advance this great country!
Also a 2GW solar plant in Bhadla, India is operational now and work has already began for the largest solar plant in Gujarat, which when operational at its full capacity will produce 30 GW of energy.
You mentioned pollution in the manufacturing process, but didn't discuss the carbon footprint. You have to burn a lot of fuel to melt the quartz to produce the silicon for the panels.
Nor the environmental cost of the eventual clean up of the site once it has reached the end of it’s life. The lithium batteries, or practically any kind of battery for that matter, required to store the energy generated, are some of the most toxic and difficult to dispose of things on the planet, right up there with nuclear waste. In fact, the current best option is generally considered to be burrying them for future generations to have to deal with.
It's called natural gas or propane or even wood. We dont have to heat it with coal if that's what you are saying. We can possibly even do it with the sun and or heating coils.
@@matthew22nz didnt you listen. The pollution depends on where the panels are made. Every country is different when it comes to enforcement of their environmental laws. A new battery has been invented already that produced no waste and can basically last forever. Developed by an MIT professor. It already has Microsoft as an investor. Mix that as well as mawels supercapacitors and things are looking brighter already. No pun intended.
This video was amazing. Now after 4 years, i think you should again make a video on Solar Plants discussing about all the new Solar plants constructed all over the world in these 4 years. It is totally the future of green energy and there is already talks and work for building solar plants with the capacity of 10-30 GW.
Channels like ColdFusion don't have to ask for likes, they are worth every like, just like how I would like the video before I watch it. (I know it's gonna be a good content)
Solar storage can also avail of pumped hydro. Pump water up to a high reservoir and let it out like standard dams when power is needed, then pump it back up via a closed loop system when renewable power is cheap. Air while simplier means pressurized vessels like a scuba tank.
Need of the Hour! Thanks for sharing such wonderful & knowledgeable video, I think that NSW plant is now started working. Even some of the towns are fully sustaining on Solar Power. Such things are making us more progressive in the direction of more Ozone-friendly & renewable energy!
One, the main problem with comparing solar to nuclear is energy density/land use. You talk about parity between the Chinese facility and a nuclear powerplant. Know why? Because that nuclear powerplant is ONE REACTOR outputting 1.5GW Now, look at the amount of land area the Chinese 1.5GW facility covers 1200 square kilometers. The largest nuclear plant in history Kashiwazaki-Kariwa was an 8GW plant, comprised of 7 reactors. And the entire plant covered 4.2 square kilometers. This kind of huge land use can have major negative effects on the local ecology. Granted, this is why many of them are built in deserts. But even deserts have their own ecology that this can disrupt (see Heat Island Effect). Now this is NOT to say that solar should NOT be in the mix for power generation. Right now, about the cleanest we can do is: Base Load and Storage Charging: Nuclear, Hydro (getting rarer in the US due to environmental regs), and Geothermal. Standard Peaking Load: Solar, Wind, Storage. Backup: Natural Gas-turbine peaking plants.
Solar power is for many people a kind of religion. Getting them to acknowledge any of the costs and disadvantages of solar power is next to impossible.
What's the major negative effects of utility-scale solar? I'll tell you, none. You can still graze the land and plant the fields underneath the solar panels.
Your calculations are way off! 1200 square miles for 1.5Gw capacity is bullshit.. I have a 25 square meter roof with 3500wp total (14 panelsx250Wp) if I scale that up to 1.5Gw, I come up with about 11 square Kilometer, which is 4.3 square mile.. But is probably even less because probably they have used better panels than I have (mine were 250Wp per panel back in 2013, for the same money and size you have now 370 Wp panels) they are angled to the sun better than mine and in a sunnier area of the world (I live at 52 degrees latitude). So yes they use more area, but not as much as you think, only about 2 to 4 times as much.. quite reasonable if you think about it.. and if decentralized to smaller fields and rooftops, the environmental impact is minimal.
@@Marmocet For me it was not a religion, but pure an economical reason to get solar panels on my roof... I had about €5000 savings in my bank account doing only 1% interest per year in 2013... By moving this money to my roof I save about €600-€650 per year on my energy bill.. that is more than 10% ROI right from the start :-).. I calculated when I had kept that money in the bank and compounded the interest rate... it would take more than 300 years to get even with the eanings of my solar panels. So yes, it was a good move to get these solar panels they pay back for themselves after about 6-7 years, they are guaranteed for 25 years to have at least 80% of their original capacity. The only disadvantage I see at the moment is the lack of storage capacity, so we can use the energy stored during the sunny parts of the day, when it is dark or cloudy. But there is worked on in many areas of the world, Tesla is rolling out utiliy sized power packs all over the world, and a company as Ambri and some others working on cheap, reliable and durable utility scale batteries.. When these come online there is actually nothing what holds us back to install more solar capacity, and it gets so dirt cheap it makes no sense anymore to build those huge nuclear power plants.
I don't understand the love for solar? It takes a vast amount of area to be useful and personally I wish people would focus their efforts on Geothermal It is potentially more efficient and greener than the best examples of green tech aka Wind, Solar and Dames. At the moment Geothermal is only used in obvious sites where it is tapped till the water runs out. However, if there was an improvement in drill technology as well as an improvement in feeding water back into the system (something that New Zealand is doing but it could be more efficient) It could be used anywhere in a space comparable to Coal and Nuclear with all the advantages those systems have (being powerful and working 24/7) with zero emissions or radioactivity.
Clifford Bryan john Wilson There is still a lot of long term possible negatives. It's best we don't rely on using the environment for energy at all if we can avoid it. After all, nature has that balanced pretty well, probably for a reason. Get behind superconductor R&D so that we can get to the Other Solar: Fusion Faster! Plus then we can easily get to mining the belts and never have to worry about materials again.
Yes, it is available everywhere. So long as you make a bore hole about +2000Km (the deeper the better see: images.slideplayer.com/26/8804034/slides/slide_3.jpg) you will reach the point where the heat from the rock is above the temp you need for producing power.
Clifford Bryan john Wilson, you're missing the fact Solar can be used anywhere there is sunlight... Even in space! As mentioned in the video, the plant in China is placed over water... So that's a lot of surface area that can be tapped with over 3/4 of the Earth covered in water versus the less than 25% we live on that we don't even fully use... Never mind we can also use the moon or a system of satellites for even more energy collection that can be beamed down to the Earth... So mo need to be stationary and can help power vehicles, devices, etc. Geothermal on the other hand requires to be stationary and connected to a permanent facility that can't be used for anything else... While there's potential danger to tapping geo-thermal energy, much like fracking and other tampering with the earth... So you can't actually just tap it from anywhere... At least not unless you want to risk creating earthquakes, setting off volcanic eruptions, or other fun stuff...
Almost every roof could be a p.v. collector. Almost every large factory roof could be a pv collector. Almost every toxic waste lake could be p.v. Almost every large parking lot could be p.v. With some imagination, one could go on and on and on. As far as geothermal, an earth sourced geothermal system for both air conditioning and heat will save about three times the total loss energy system we currently use. This is, however, latitudenally (sp?) based, but is fabulous for Ohio and like states. I ain't talking Yellowstone geysers here. I'm talking just plain dirt, starting about 6 feet down. A.C. is mentioned as the new biggest use worldwide energy consumption. Think India,etc, when they get wealthier. There is a way, and it ain't what we are doing now.
Heavy geothermal utility sized has generated earthquakes. Since good geothermal is often in seismic sensitive zones, the drilling has yet to overcome this. Witness the higher level of minor earthquakes in fracking states who rarely had them before fracking. Residential geothermal heating costs alot of cash and can rarely be done unless its a brand new home. Even then it works in temperate climates. It works in Iceland due to the low population and large empty areas where earthquakes were prevalent from volcanic reasons already.
Nice video! One of the things I don't hear too much about is how complementary solar is with EVs. While solar will slowly reduce the need to burn coal, it will actually in an indirect way reduce our dependence on oil. For most people, they only commute in their cars, so charging at work (and really only topping off) under a few solar panels is ideal.
Can you make a video about nuclear power plants ! They are very clean energy and most people don't understand how they work and are against them just because the have linked the word " nuclear" with negative standards dispite the fact that it's the best energy producing method for mass electricity
Great videos, please keep it up. Could you please do a video on what caused the 2008 financial crash and why it is that since then wages have not kept up with inflation as they did before. You did say that this subject would be a video in itself. Thank you very much for your videos and have a good weekend.
Enery output you talk about is a peak output. Solar power plants just like wind power plants have it in like 30-50% of time at most. Coal and nuclear is stable. Just as a reminder.
it will be roughly 50-50 for rooftop and solar pants. dense cities do not have enough roof top. also you can have solar plants in deserts far away from coasts which have more clouds. like the entire coast of califronia has coastal mountains. clouds and fog run into the moutains and stop. on the east side of the coast mountains the land is cheap and sun strong. This is also true of china. we need both.
A lot of misinformed comments even for 2017. To end the discussion Nuclear vs Solar: google how many nuclear power plants are being built next year in the World. Now compare that to the number of solar farms being built in the same time period. Add to that the number of wind farms. The war is over folks. Long live renewable energy ;)
what about the carbon foot print of the photovoltaic cells? the lion battery, the cables, the transportation etc etc etc... when/at what point does the solar offset its own cost to environment and produce non-replacement energy?
Do you even imagine how equipment for other power plants is made? Have you ever seen a NPP? Thousands tons of concrete, metal, milling, cutting, welding, fuel transportation etc.
GVGVIT1993 the question here is about solar. don't go all trump on me. I am all for solar. incomplete information is as good as no information... I am fully aware of conventional power generation technologies and it's advantages and disadvantages including carbon footprint.
thank you for this informative and thought provoking video. living in south Africa and being very active in charitable work I find it frustrating at the speed bumps that one constantly encounters. we are country of massive poverty where a large percentage of the population has decide on a daily basis if they need food to eat or to buy electricity for lights. the 2 largest hurdles I am encountering is : no government initiative to implement a significant subsidy program that allows most needy people to install small to medium PV- Systems for own use. the other problem I am facing is that there seems to be no way accessing 2nd-hand / used PV panels etc. I know that people constantly upgrade their systems as they outgrow them or they become less efficient due to age. in your video you specially refer to Australia being the world leader in recycling PV systems. my thought is simple. why not divert these systems to other people who can still get a few years of use out of them? Surely, this would be a much better solution. I just wish I could get hold of used PV-Panels, charge controllers, inverters, batteries etc that are being replaced / recycled and put them to good use for those people for it would be life changing
You won't be the superpower if you invest in a technology that is planned to end! Soon, there won't be any oil or gas. USA is going to have some real troubles.
I'm currently having my major on an engineering in renewable energy in Mexico. People all the time ask me "where can I work with that" but that's a story for another moment. A few months ago we made a research about converting our gasoline cars to electric cars, not changing them but converting them, and right now we're making a research about becoming a solar-powered city. Sadly the biggest struggle we're finding with both researches is both the small support of the government and the people that doesn't trust in these kind of changes. And in another story related to polluted water by chemicals I witnessed a thesis in which it was cleaned by a now expensive way. Imagine a 1Liter bottle of water, how much does it costs? Imagine it being 10 times more expensive. Now imagine a future in which most of our water is polluted and we have to use this method to clean it, then purify it, then putting it's "sale" cost. That future may happen if we don't take care of our water. That will happen if we don't push our governments and if we don't teach people the actual benefits of going clean. I'm talking about Mexico mostly were the government isn't very supportive and people is close minded. But of course we all can put our effort in our own cities and countries
The panels would have to be on the Mexican side to face south. They would destroy them just for spite. All it would take to crack a panel is a rock and they are cheap and abundant.
Insightful and full of promise as always. Inspiring . If only they could come up with technology to get rid of adverts what a wonderful world it would be
So much BS. so little time....No a 1.5 Mw solar is not equivalent to half a 3.0 MW Nuclear plant. That is because we have this thing we call night time.. Cost will come down but like with Moore's law It will hit a plateau and that will happen at about .70 cents per Watt. So many other issues I do not have time.
1.5 + 1.5= 3.0 3.0/2=1.5 a MW is a MW no mater how it is generated. You were home schooled, right? Moore's law is not a law of price/cost/profit. It is a mathematical statistic expression for the obsoleting and replacement of technology from a technical point of view, not a business and investment point of view. The money industries of stocks and bonds use other statistical tools to that end.
A few things: 1. I cannot find any information about the annual generation of the Tengger Desert Solar Park, even as this solar plant was apparently completed installed at full capacity in 2015. 2. Perhaps I'm just misunderstanding what you mean by "areas in causing harm to workers", but the issue that impacted china back in 2008 was not waste from the original silicon product. The waste product that was dumped was silicon tetrachloride that is manufacturing waste as a byproduct of polysilicon production from metallurgical grade silicon. In the USA there are more regulations on how to store this material, but currently it is economical to get rid of this waste product. The industry faces a similar problem as nuclear as reprocessing silicon tetrachloride waste costs millions of dollars due to non-standardized and sophisticated machinery. So while we may not have this issue of dumping this waste directly into a river, we instead have this very vague accumulating about of hazardous waste that we aren't actively attempting to remove. This is still a major concern. 3. What about meeting electricity demand. As we push for CO2 free power we set deadlines by what percentage our portfolios need to be by a certain time, but they are also constrained by current energy and electricity demand. In other coutnries this may not be as big of deal, but living in America I have severe reservations that you can install enough solar to meet aggregate production of fossil fuels by some politician timelines of 30-40 years to reach 40% solar generation in the USA. Keep in mind that's 1,631,631 GW/h-yr, and in 2016 our country produced 52,833GW/h-yr. 4. Another issue I have is in cost. I understand if your comparing the cost to produce each solar unit per KW but what happens when you compare of large commercial development scale. We see these very large solar plants in the USA that have capacities of 200-600 MW, but they still cost in total $1-$3 Billion. I would love to see an actual breakdown of costs comparatively with nuclear and then taken into consideration with plant life and production. Youll have a nuclear plant that has 2,000 MW capcity (over three times that of solar) whose capital costs are $3 Billion vs. $14 Billion, but this plant also has and can run for 35 years compared to 16 year life of the solar units on that solar farm. How much cheaper is solar than nuclear on the large commercial scale, and why is it cheaper (is it just construction or is it liability or other factors).
Great video man, but you missed a power storage system. Create a PV solar array or wind farm, and build it in excess of whats needed. When the system is creating more power than is being consumed, use the excess power to pump water to an elevated dam from a lower one. Then when no power is being produced by the solar array, you drain the top dam through a hydro turbine to create desired power levels. Obviously there is more maths to it than the above, but you get the idea
One way to store solar energy is by using it to pump water up the mountains into big water power plants with it. In that way you can use the power produced by the dams at any time you like.
Another method of storing energy is pump storage. Simillar to hydro power plant, but water can be pumped to upper reservoir when excess energy is available.
Fantastic video, great example of true journalism - unbiased and factual. Enough for any educated individual to see the benefits of this technology. Living in a country (Australia) that is only now understanding the technology that is going to be saving earth but still some time off full implementation of green energy that is sustainable moving forward. I'm glad that up loaders such as your good self are spreading an alternative to clean coal the abomination of frac mining. Please continue your efforts!
Looking forward to ColdFusion doing a video on our Electric Universe community and especially the SAFIRE Project and so, getting really upto date with technology and the future.
A highly superior power storage system that was not mentioned here: Pumped Storage Power Plant (PSPP). A very interesting, original and simple concept. Would appreciate if ColdFusion will look into it or make a video about it.
