>Tell me more about "people like me" and especially how you know this based on a two-sentence comment on reddit.

You are making it sound like I am projecting things onto you instead of stating the obvious fact that you dont care about the economic or power engineering factor. How do I know that? Because you ignored both in your post.

>Why would it not be an issue of both?

Because the way we generate, transmit and store power is literally what power engineering is. The main pillars of power engineering industry has been tasked by the state to ensure the maintenance, development and the stability of the grid. If the grid fails and people die, its their head, not any other departments.

>That's (one of) the engineering problems, yes. There are other problems too.

You just destroyed your previous post here. You went from "its the fault of big corporations" to "oh yeah, there are some engineering issues that prevent it too".

>That's a resource allocation problem.

The economy is resource allocation problem, yes. A very huge obstacle.

>Lots more assumptions that are also incorrect.

I met so many people that share their opinion on renewable energy without knowing anything about power engineering. You among them. I am not assuming. I am certain. You dont know anything about power engineering, if you did you would consider basic engineering challenges and restrictions. And you dont care. If you did, you would learn the basics.

>Draw a big box around the whole problem. Government problems, transportation, engineering, everything. Ask the question: what costs more? Switching to renewables, or not switching? The answer is not switching. The economic costs due to what you are hand-waving away as "ecology" are going to be orders of magnitude greater than all the engineering problems you are fixated on - and we're going to still have to solve those engineering problems, as well as solve a whole bunch of new ones.

No, that is not the answer. You have been fed propaganda from people that are just like you. People who ignore partial problems and make assumptions to make the math look like its works out in favor of renewables. However the main problem is that is not even the question.

Also let me specifically point out your attitude of "there will be problems, but other people can figure those out". This is the problem. The people you want to figure those out are constantly telling you its not viable, but you dont care about that either.

>This has been true the whole time...

That just dumb. But lets focus on the conspiracy theory. You know who likes money? Everybody. If renewable energy were profitable, the people who own oil companies would invest in them. They dont care about oil, the planet or anything. Its about profit.

This is exactly what happened in my country. My government gave solar energy large subsidy. The math was that if few take advantage of that, it wont matter and we will get more renewable sources. For few years nothing happened. Then huge amount of solar powerplants were build in just two years before the state was able to change the subsidy plan. Many of those that owned dirty powerplants went for it. It was free money if you had the capital.

a) you inserted yourself into the conversation without knowing the context.

b) you need a much smaller battery for reactive power than powering the grid for hours on end.

Stop wasting your own time lol.

Think bigger picture. If you can externalize the costs of the ecological damage we are doing, the public health costs, the costs of wars to control resources, etc., then it looks cheaper to use them.

If you include all of the true costs, for everyone, then it would have been much, much cheaper to move to renewables as quickly as possible decades ago.

That's the fundamental problem - the negative effects can always be pushed off onto someone else, somewhere else, until suddenly they can't anymore. It leads to people making decisions that are good for them now, but are worse for everyone, later.

This is true, but in the past it was cheaper to produce electric energy from fossil fuels. I'm talking about overall costs, including economic damage from climate change, the wars that are fought over scarce resources, wars that will be fought over scarcer resources, costs due to mass migration, collapse of ecosystems, etc. If you look at the big picture, it's going to be incredibly, unbelievably expensive to deal with our long term dependence on fossil fuels. But it's all externalized costs that someone else will have to pay in the future, until that someone is us, now.

VAR is a unit of reactive power as opposed to Apparent and Real power. You want to limit the reactive power as much as you can during transmission, to minimize natural loses.

How should I know that when you replied to somebody else who did not talk about reactive power. But alright, while this topic is not very important, you are still wrong on the price. Which is not a big deal, but just so its clear.

Jesus, time wasted because you couldnt provide simple information. You could have cleared this misunderstanding right away.

I'm comfortable asserting that that ain't how it's gonna go.

Software is nearly free to replicate and apply. Anti-aging technology will manifestly not be. You've constructed a near-perfect example of false equivalence. A much better comparison would be the current-day bespoke treatments for rare disorders and cancers. I.e. the ones that run to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per treatment.

> Yeah, no, stop spreading your pseudo conspiracy theories.

It's not a theory, it's documented fact.

> People like you focus solely on the ecology of the renewables, not the economy and more importantly the power engineering.

Tell me more about "people like me" and especially how you know this based on a two-sentence comment on reddit.

> And make no mistake, this is an issue of power engineering, not ecology.

Why would it not be an issue of both? And why wouldn't it include economic factors, public health, public convenience, transportation networks, defense, geopolitics, etc? Why is it just a single issue that you decided is different from the single issue you wrongly assumed that I was focusing on?

> The problem was, is and for a long time will continue being the transmission and storage of electricity.

That's (one of) the engineering problems, yes. There are other problems too.

> The price of generation is an issue, but in the opposite direction than you would expect. Low electricity prices are harmful for the grid at the moment as conventional "dirty" powerplants are being closed due to not being economically viable. However we need these powerplants for now to stabilize the grid.

That's a resource allocation problem.

> But people who only care about renewable energy dont talk about that. Not only because it goes against their claims, but also because they simply dont know or care about that.

Lots more assumptions that are also incorrect.

Anyway, here's the deal: I said "cheaper overall." Draw a big box around the whole problem. Government problems, transportation, engineering, everything. Ask the question: what costs more? Switching to renewables, or not switching? The answer is not switching. The economic costs due to what you are hand-waving away as "ecology" are going to be orders of magnitude greater than all the engineering problems you are fixated on - and we're going to still have to solve those engineering problems, as well as solve a whole bunch of new ones.

This has been true the whole time. It has been true since we first started using fire to lift water. The only thing that has changed over time is our awareness. We couldn't work to solve the problem more efficiently until we understood it. We first started understanding it more than one hundred years ago, and became able to do something about it in the last few decades. Oil companies and those who profit the most from them intentionally worked to reduce the public understanding of the problems specifically because solving them would cause them to be less rich. Not poor - just less rich.

Call that a pseudo conspiracy theory if you want, but it's documented. They did it on purpose.

> KVARs

I am talking about it because OP was talking about KVARs.

Now next time read the whole thread if you are missing context.

Thanks for the correction.

First off, you should have said so then. Second, why are you talking about Voltage stabilization when the frequency stability is the more pressing issue? Finally Voltage stability is tied to electricity demand/production just like frequency stability. The way you stabilize both the frequency nad Voltage on the gird level is by controlling the generation.

Unless you are talking about Voltage stability at local levels of end consumers. Which again, why would you do that? Then it is question of the actual wires.

Do you even know what you are talking about?

I am talking about voltage stabilization lol.

In my opinion, this technological innovation is of great significance, because rare earth elements play an irreplaceable role in modern technology and industrial production. From mobile phones to electric vehicles, from medical equipment to solar panels, these elements are needed. Most of the world's supply of these elements is now mined in China, and Chinese export restrictions and trade policies have made global markets more uncertain about the stability of these elements.

In addition, the method of extracting rare earth elements from low-concentration cyanobacteria is also an environmentally friendly and sustainable way, which helps to reduce the pressure on limited resources and the pollution of the environment.

it's so insane that stuff like that is even taken into consideration.

just let them whine, jesus.

build giant cubes that can house anyone who'd care to live there and build giant energy farms. people will deal with it

You left out the most important part of this plan, OP. Everybody knows that we have the capability to create huge amount of cheap energy. That hasnt been an issue for decades.

The problem is the grid stability and Elon's plan is for everybody to buy a tesla car and use that as a huge virtual battery to balance the grid. Now this is a logistic nightmare, economically unviable and maybe even plain impossible.

However if there is anything I want people to take away from this "plan". Its that Tesla is to profit big. As in BIG. As in becoming part of indispensable state infrastructure. The guy who owns Tesla came with a plan that will not only financially skyrocket Tesla, but make our civilization actually depend on it. That is the plan here.

>when it comes to stabilising the grid, those disadvantages are irrelevant.

Run that by me again? The stabilizing happens by charging/discharging those batteries. If you discharge the whole capacity of the battery, it will not stabilize anything. So how do you reckon that the capacity is irrelevant to grid stabilization?

Also to claim that cost is irrelevant to anything, ever, is just the dumbest thing. Cost is the ever present all important enabler. If the battery is not economically viable, it wont be there to stabilize the grid in the first place.

Yeah, no, stop spreading your pseudo conspiracy theories. People like you focus solely on the ecology of the renewables, not the economy and more importantly the power engineering. And make no mistake, this is an issue of power engineering, not ecology.

The problem was, is and for a long time will continue being the transmission and storage of electricity. The price of generation is an issue, but in the opposite direction than you would expect. Low electricity prices are harmful for the grid at the moment as conventional "dirty" powerplants are being closed due to not being economically viable. However we need these powerplants for now to stabilize the grid.

But people who only care about renewable energy dont talk about that. Not only because it goes against their claims, but also because they simply dont know or care about that.

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I’ve driven across Nevada. They should be stoked to have something to look at.

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I argue that for an electricity world that is phasing out fossil fuels and moving to renewables, a less-than-burning economy presupposes that the cost of renewable technologies continues to fall, while also requiring innovation and investment in energy storage and networks. Only in this way can the stability and reliability of renewable energy sources be ensured, as well as the demand elasticity to meet energy demand.

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If they meant land surface though, and in proper units, then it would be 298800 km², roughly the size of the Phillipines or Italy.

If they meant the whole surface of earth it would be 1019795 km², or the size of Egypt.

Energy production is one thing, but storage another and also energy density of that storage. Especially when talking about transportation.

Airplanes need to be light; powering them with liquid fuels is great because they are very energy dense and also the airplane gets lighter as it goes. Not the case with batteries.

Similar issue for ships like cargo ships - space is valueable there, you can not waste 50x the amount of space for batteries compared to fuel.

In the transportation sector liquid fuels will be there for a long time. Perhaps we manage to make them non-fossil though.

30TW of nuclear could use even less land and be more reliable. And the next generation of nuclear will be far cheaper.

Interesting, I wonder if they have always been like that or made the switch